The Dethroned King and the Nothing Boy
by Prince-Malice
Summary: Pitch and Jack have been waiting a long time for each other, Jack just doesn't know it yet. Sequel Coming Soon
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I don't own anything, please heed the rating. Rated for language, sex, and dubcon, viewer discretion is advised. **

Pitch never imagined doing something so tedious as rifling through children's teeth.

Frantic and cursing to himself, he dug through every single damned vial until he found the one with the familiar, albeit brunette, smiling boy plastered on it.

The Shadow King ran his thumb over the gold designs that seemed dull in comparison, unable to grasp that the vial could be the exact same as every other child's in the world, when held within was so much _more_.

Jack's teeth... he had found them, at last.

Because _forbid_ that Pitch be able to use his shadows to hunt down a needle in a haystack. And so the dignified and posh Pitch had succumbed to crawling on and _scraping up_ his knees to find what he was looking for, and if he hadn't been aware before, he certainly knew now that there were a _lot_ of children in the world.

Everything was going so splendidly. He would lift the vial, gold and beckoning and with it in his hand, lead Jack down a path of shadows. Jack would see an answer, simple and offered up to him in forfeiture and when he finally had his memories back, Jack would have no choice but to choose a side.

Which was Pitch's motivation to crawl around for the blasted things in the first place.

Pitch Black... the content (and tamer) of nightmares, held to himself the small case, wrapped up easily in his long fingers.

He had suffered many losses in his life.

He had _earned_ the world of nightmares and shadows.

There was nothing the Man in the Moon could take from him because he had nothing.

Nothing but Jack Frost's teeth.

Even with all he had seen, Pitch found the knowledge of what those pearly-whites possessed to be marvelous.

They were the only thing between him and what he had lost, a burn far too recent, merely a short three hundred years prior.

It had all been so simple.

"_The teeth? Why do you care about the teeth?"_

The answer had been before him the entire time, Pitch just had chosen not to acknowledge the possibility, maybe because it sounded like a pathetic excuse one gives themselves to calm erratic breathing in a fit of tears.

_Maybe it's not his fault. _

It is, after all, the more realistic, scathing deductions that seem to stick.

_Maybe he just doesn't believe in you anymore_.

Pitch smiled in a way that showed off each of his glittering teeth, the quivering of his lips indiguisable.

What happens next, changes the playing field.

Closing his eyes slowly, Pitch Black touched the memories within the casing and was cast into a world forgotten by everyone.

Everyone except for the Nightmare King.

There was once a boy named Jack. Loyal and charming, he was loved by many, but none so much as his darling sister, Pippa.

Pippa had been the foundation of Jack's multitudinous audience. With each stupid, daring act he performed for the amusement (and possibly approval) of his peers, it was sweet little Pippa and her alone that lacked excitement or adrenaline for her brother's endeavors.

Instead, she was seeping _fear_.

It was at first, so marginal that it could not feed a lonely shadow.

But as Jack began to perform his daring deeds for growing crowds, the fear settled like an ember in a famine field and ignited.

That is how Pitch came to know Pippa, the charming girl who doted too much on the concerns of her brother.

A starving animal will find red meat if it is left to permeate the air long enough.

As such a creature, Pitch, long dwindled and forgotten, found his way back to a place where he once pulsed terror through the veins of each living being.

Shivering and stumbling through the snow, cold even in the blaring sun, Pitch had wondered where such a strong and throbbing fear could come from at the brightest hour of the day.

Was it not shadows and darkness that crept into a child's mind and spoiled it until it was just his taste?

Through the village he trekked and sneered at all the happenings that were so _innocent_ and _happy_. How confused he was when the source of his calling oozed from the center of a crowd of children, each laughing and cheering and chanting.

_Jack! Jack! Jack!_

And then he heard it... the whimper and stammer of a child wrapped up in fear; drowning in it.

"Please be careful! Jack!"

Pitch came to the realization that he had been summoned from his dankest cave, from within which he rotted, by the love one held for another person.

It brought a smile to his face, one that ached his cheeks for they had not uplifted in many, many years.

Pitch always was a fan of _irony_.

Pitch stuck around because where else had he to go? A pitiful depiction of the terribleness he once was, the man of shadows stayed where the fear was strong, right beside the child Pippa.

How he lived for the tar of fright, letting it warm him through the coming of winter. In a world where few were ever afraid, his feast was plentiful so long as the boy named Jack continued to endanger himself for a cheap thrill.

It wasn't until later that Pitch realized no such 'cheap thrill' existed, only the want Jack had to see a smile on his sister's face, another perfect example of that delicious irony.

It had been a fortnight of trailing after and feeding off the scraps of fear Pippa left behind as she followed her brother; the Nightmare King strong again after so many weak nights.

And so he blew the flames in the dry grass just slightly, and they became an _inferno_.

The terror Pippa experienced for the sake of her brother became something far more sinister.

Lying in bed, she held the covers that kept away the chill to her chin, small knuckles turning whiter and eyes wider as the shadows danced across her walls.

It was Pitch's favorite puppet show, his fingers nimble as they traipsed in grand designs. His own special theater in which he is both actor and audience.

He adored the way Pippa's breath grew shallow and clipped, the way in which her gaze darted about every which way.

The room became an oven and Pitch basked in it's emission...

Until a light leaked in through the crack of the door, followed by a candle and something even brighter holding it high.

The boy, Jack, had come at the whimpers of his ward. They called to him, however quiet they might have been, big brother was here and there was nothing to be afraid of.

"There is nothing to be afraid of."

Pitch thought to himself that he could come to despise this boy with time. The soft pink in his cheeks and spiral of messy brown spikes were plain enough but even Pitch had to look twice at his eyes, each a puddle of warm liquor.

"Yes, there is nothing to fear." Pitch spoke aloud to those that neither saw nor heard him.

He slipped into the shadows of Jack himself, behind the boy who stood as a beacon. Pitch manipulated his silhouette, changed it into something malicious and then heard the most gratifying thing.

"But fear itself."

The scream of a scared child.

Pitch spent the night lounging on the beaten desk beside Pippa's bed, watching her where she curled into her protector.

He often sat there, unamused, pining, calculating manors in which to frighten poor Pippa to a point where her fear could spread into the other children.

Fear always spreads.

The only thing between him and the infection taking root was Jack.

The damned brother he'd once been almost grateful for.

If it hadn't been for Jack... Pippa would have never felt fear strong enough to draw the attention of the Nightmare King to her. But now, all he did was act as a balm to the rampant flame Pitch had started; containing it, weakening it.

It was a war that only pitch was aware of, settling under Pippa's small, wooden bed.

He followed her out each day, as she followed Jack.

He'd whisper to Jack.

"Yes, that seems _frightfully_ dangerous. Do go on ahead."

Although Jack could not hear him.

The brunette boy would leap across branches with his thin arms and Pitch would turn and _stare_ at Pippa as she frowned and called up to her brother for him to "Be careful!"

But Jack never really was. If he was anywhere near as reckless as he appeared, Pitch knew Pippa had plenty to fear.

Back beneath the young girl's bed, Pitch dragged a single sharp nail up the soft wooden underbelly of the frame, for no other reason than boredom.

The hitch of breath he heard above him was enlivening. She had _heard_ him.

Although Pitch knew it was pointless to celebrate victory against an unwilling (and ignorant) opponent, he could not fight down the desire to boast rattling in his chest.

He did it again.

Scratching beneath the bed, when Pippa could no longer keep herself awake out of fright, she dreamed of horrible, wretched things.

If fear was fire on a cold night then a nightmare was water in a desert.

He touched the terrors that floated to the surface of her mind... and reeled back.

The image he got was no monster nor plague.

It was her very self, alone and very much without Jack.

Even with the Nightmare King himself under her bed, Pippa's biggest fear was still losing her brother.

If Pitch was capable of sympathizing, he might have in that moment, just a bit.

The more a person believed in fear, the stronger Pitch became.

And one day, he reminded himself, they would once again believe in the boogeyman.

And to think such a regime would come from the concerns of one little girl.

Pippa was proof that all it takes is the belief of one child for something to become real.

Because she did believe. She believed in the fear and the nightmares and the skittering sounds from beneath her bed.

She believed so strongly that she jolted from her sleep one night with a cry.

"Jack!"

And Pitch rolled his eyes because she often did this, crying out for Jack.

And Jack came, because he always did.

Pitch had nothing against the boy personally. He was an alright lad. Did his chores, took care of his sister, oh wait, that one was detrimental to Pitch's plan, so maybe he wasn't so 'alright'.

"There's something under my bed."

Pippa whispered, as if afraid that _something_ would hear her.

"Don't be silly Pippa. It is probably just a mouse."

"No Jack. It's not a mouse. I know what mice sound like."

"I'll take a look. If it'll make you feel better."

The light from the candle Jack always brought with him lumbered over to the bedside.

Pitch could only stare as the young man knelt down and reached a hand into his domain, into what he had claimed as home for the sake of pretending he had one.

The Nightmare King was not pleased.

The pink hand crept further beneath the bed, closer to Pitch's own.

He watched it approach, and then...

It touched him.

The sensation was a physical phenomenon, the touch of another being something so far distant in the past, the aesthesis had been lost entirely to Pitch.

Until now.

He did not know who withdrew quicker, himself or Jack, but the human wasted no time in dropping low and gazing under the bed with such _confidence_, his candle lighting each crevice.

He stared right into Pitch's eyes.

And never saw him.

What he did see, Pitch noticed, was the scratch marks on the frame. Far too large to be made by a rodent.

First Jack's face contorted with confusion, and then serenity.

"There's nothing down here, Pippa. Nothing to be afraid of."

He was up and out of sight.

Pitch just stared at the place he once was and flexed his hand.

It still tingled.

Since the encounter, Pitch couldn't help but notice Jack as something more than just the source of Pippa's fear.

He eyed him a bit more often, when they were out and about for the day or when he would hold Pippa in his lap and read her _happy_ stories before she settled down for sleep.

The nightmares were not every night, but they were frequent and the young girl would wake and cry and her brother would be there, without fail.

Those nights, Pitch would watch the gentle nature the brunette exposed as he coddled Pippa close. The foolhardy boy that pranced through the village was gone and before the Nightmare King was a simple young man, desperate to chase away all the bad dreams.

From the day he arrived, Pitch kept close on Pippa's heels, like a dog chasing a bone.

He couldn't explain why he chose one night to follow Jack from where he tucked his darling sister in. Out of the room and far from the bed he'd claimed as his home, Pitch crept the halls that creaked beneath his footfall.

Every so often, Jack would stop and turn to look over his shoulder and Pitch couldn't help but think that maybe...

"Can you hear me, boy?"

No response. There never was. The last person Pitch had ever spoken to was Manny, and it had been more of a threatening, burning, rage.

Jack proceeded to his room without so much as a stir in his attention. The wood cabin was simple in design but nicer than many Pitch had seen. They could have been the perfect family, hard working parents that were well-known within the village and two _precious_ little children to follow in their footsteps.

Pitch found himself rolling his eyes frequently since coming into the house.

In his room, Jack sighed and stretched shoulders. He sat at the edge of his cot, Pitch noticed, nowhere near as nice as Pippa's frame. While her's was sturdy and rich in color and varnish, his had been chipped away by years of wear and stood on uneven legs.

"Do your parents favor your sister more?" Pitched asked the air, looming before where Jack sat, chin resting in his hands.

"Is that why you started all of this..." He waved his hand through the air. "_this_?"

Jack made no indication that anyone spoke, just sat and looked into the darkness when he should have been sleeping.

The walls had a emptiness about them, although they were no more barren than any other room.

Perhaps they were a reflection of the boy they sheltered, but Pitch didn't even know where to start in matters of lonely humans.

He stared with a longing to know, why did Jack not go to bed? The hours were slipping by quickly and soon the moon would be gone and with it the chance to sleep, even if for a few short hours in a blanket that scraped the softness off his skin.

And then it hit him.

He stayed in Jack's room that night. Standing, pacing, sitting across the way in a rickety chair, the whole while watching Jack's tired eyes strain to stay open.

When the sun peeked over the east, Jack had just slipped into slumber, still propped up and waiting...

Just in case Pippa had another nightmare.

The light chased away the darkness and Pitch stared with his jaw slackened and his eyes clouded at the young man.

"When was the last time you had a night's sleep?"

Stalking over to the slouched form, Pitch settled his hands on Jack's soft shoulders and his stomach churned when they did not pass through, but rested against cold skin.

Winter only seemed colder and the sun did little to leaven the chill in the air.

Pitch did not stop to think about why he did it, but he pushed down on Jack's shoulders until the boy was strewn across his cot. The Shadow Man even pulled the thin blanket up to his chin, before leaving to find Pippa.

She was soundly asleep and a darker part of Pitch scorned her for it.

The damsel Jack revolved his life around, snoring away while her brother fought exhaustion just _in case_ she needed him.

For the first time, Pitch considered leaving the small house and making his way back into the mountains.

At least there he was never conflicted in his own feelings.

Pitch didn't start to _hate_ Pippa, because what sort of Nightmare King had personal vendettas against what may as well have been their meal? But there was certainly something that hadn't been there before, a mar on his indifference, one that seemed to spread as he noticed the bags under Jack's eyes every morning.

They only got deeper as Pippa's distress grew stronger.

Each day, pitch paid a bit more attention to the boy, taking note in any change of his otherwise rambunctious gate or the ease of his smile.

Pitch could not help but be _intrigued_ by the boy, sure there were parts of him that longed to understand his sacrifice to protect his sister, but mostly, how could Jack touch him?

No one knew fear the way Pitch did and he could recognize it by the distinct bitter taste it gave the air.

Jack was not afraid of anything.

He worried over Pippa, sure, but through his confidence in his own ability to protect her, he did not fear _for_ her.

It was sickening to see someone so... so...

Invulnerable.

Pitch decided it would be best to _test_ his ability to communicate with Jack.

He would whisper things into the boy's ear but Jack would show no sign of response until Pitch leaned just a bit too close, brushing his nose against Jack's soft, brown hair.

At that he would reel back and stare at where Pitch stood and it was almost disappointing how each time, Jack saw not a trace of him.

Such occurrences usually took place in the kitchen, where Jack would warm himself by the iron oven. It was the only place the boy chose to be alone.

It gave Pitch a sort of sick enjoyment to know he regularly intruded on the boy's solace.

"Why can you feel me, Jack?"

Pitched asked one afternoon beneath grey clouds, running the tip of his finger down the shallow of the brunette's back and watching him shudder.

"Jack? What's wrong?"

And there was the fear, it was Pippa's as usual.

Pitch always wondered what Jack's fear would taste like and what it would take to make him afraid.

"Nothing, Pippa. Get your coat on, it's cold."

Maybe that is why he kept _touching_ Jack whenever given the opportunity. A graze of knuckles, a wandering hand, a brush through his hair...

Each time, Jack offered nothing but a twisted expression, confused (and nothing more) at the strange phenomenon he had been experiencing.

"Does anything get under your skin, Jack?"

Pitch would ask.

"Tell me what _gets to you_, Jack."

Pitch was growing restless.

He was never a patient spirit.

And then one day... everything changed.

The day had been long and very cold and even Jack had been consumed by a level of exhaustion that he could not be stirred from.

Pitch knows because he did not come when Pippa cried for him in the throes of her nightmares.

As the dreams fought on through the night, the fear seeped from her like a fog and settled on the ground. From it, Pitch rose up and stared at his hands that trembled with power.

And then Pippa woke, her eyes blown wide, she stared up at the Nightmare King and let out a scream.

She had seen him.

She _saw_ him.

He had very little time to swell with pride before Jack burst in through the door and out of pure reflex, Pitch melted into shadow and soared under Pippa's bed where he felt he belonged.

"Oh Jack! I saw him! I saw him! The Boogeyman, Jack!" She cried, tears and snot trailing down her little pink face.

"It was just a bad dream, Pippa. There is no such thing as the Boogeyman."

Pitch shook his head and rolled his eyes (again) as Jack went about comforting his _darling_ sister.

"Please Jack, I saw him! He's _under there_."

And Pitch could only guess that she had pointed down at her tattered mattress.

He was bored of such a routine by then.

Resting his chin in his hand, Pitch watched the skirmish of feet and whispered pleading as if it had become mundane.

The boy would look around, glance under the bed, shake off the chill he felt at the base of his spine, and that would be it.

Just like usual.

"Jack. There is something there. I _know_ it is there. Just look."

Her voice sounded so hoarse, so desperate. It sickened Pitch how she milked her brother's sympathy.

"Alright. I'll take a look."

Pitch didn't so much as flinch when the brunette boy dropped to his knees and peered into his darkness.

But Jack froze.

Then Pitch froze.

There was no mistaking the recognition in the young man's eyes. Their whiskey wells glittered even in the dark and the Nightmare King was unsure which one of them was more alarmed in that moment.

He had seen Pitch, seen him and continued to see him and the only thing Pitch could come up with was

"Do you believe in me?"

Shoulders still stiff, Jack rose with no indication that he had heard the Nightmare King. He stood for what felt like hours in raging silence. Outside, the wind had calmed like a tamed sea and the walls stopped their nightly creaking, there was no doubt in Pitch's mind that in that moment, he was very real to Jack.

"Jack?" Pippa pleaded, clutching at his night shirt.

"There's nothing there, it was just a bad dream."

His voice was far too steady, the calm collected in him like a puddle and soon Pitch could not even feel the girl's fear anymore.

Things resumed the way they had been. Jack tucked her away for the night and skittered back to his room, the only difference being a heavy hesitance in his step.

When Pitch clambered back out, Pippa, who now had a very determined look about her face, could no longer see him.

He stomped about and cursed the Man in the Moon, the people of the earth, and Jack.

All it took was a reassuring _lie_ and she had stopped believing.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Please heed the warnings for this chapter. Dub-con, sexual content, underage.**

Jack, however, was now very aware that there was something under Pippa's bed. He wasn't sure as to what it was, because describing something as a shadow with very gold eyes would get him nowhere. If he were to tell his sister that 'oh, well look at that, there _is_ a monster under your bed.' he was certain she would never be emotionally okay again.

Pitch was confused at first as to why he was not ripped from beneath the bed and beaten within an inch of his not-life. He entertained the thought that maybe he had imagined the shock in those large eyes, even deeper up close.

No, Pitch was convinced that he had been seen, the strength in his limbs stood as a reminder that there was someone who believed in him and if he had anything to go by, it wasn't Pippa.

Not anymore.

The next morning while the young girl slept, Pitch found Jack awake with eyes that suggested he hadn't so much as blinked since their encounter.

"Can you see me, Jack?"

And _there_.

The brunette's back stiffened ever so slightly, the way it might have when Pitch would caress it for a bit of fun.

"You can." He croaked in wonder. But what was Pitch to do with a boy that did not fear his presence? What point was there in being seen when all he could do was glower and spit out whatever came to mind?

He wasn't about to make pleasant conversation with him, so, what?

Jack turned around as if he heard nothing, saw nothing... but the Nightmare King knew better now. And even if Jack didn't acknowledge him, he saw him and heard him and that meant that to one person in the world...

Pitch was real.

He could see it in Jack's gritted teeth and whitening knuckles.

That changed everything.

Although it was Pippa's fear that kept him strong, Pitch found himself abandoning her side for Jack's.

That is, he followed him everywhere.

"You're going to have to talk to me sometime."

He would say just as Jack scaled a rotten old tree branch. His voice would make the boy tense or lose his footing for half a second, spiking the fear in Pippa as she and the other village children watched (cheered).

When Jack would fetch fire wood, Pitch would be beside him, dropping comments such as "Oh no, that is far too damp." and "it would be wise to avoid that, it is riddled with rot." until Jack would become more irritated than anything else.

It wasn't that Pitch was looking out for the boy or anything, that was something a _Guardian_ would do.

Not a Nightmare King.

But he could not deny the cheap thrill he got from grinding on Jack's very last nerve.

It had become his favorite past time.

Although it was fun and games at first, Pitch was slowly beginning to resent that Jack pretended he did not exist.

Most of all, he feared that Jack would one day convince himself such was true, and Pitch would once again be invisible to the world.

Pitch with a grudge was an ugly thing. He would lean against the counter while Jack fed his sister lunch in the absence of their parents, he would mock Jack by flapping his hand in time with Jack's words.

When that didn't work, he would flick a cup over or a napkin off the table and grin when Jack had to pick it up.

It was only when the brunette boy's jaw would clench that Pitch felt the closest he could to reassurance.

"You are getting clumsy, Jack." Pippa would scold. "What am I going to do with you?"

At which Pitch would stand over her and reach slowly, with one finger, to jab her in the neck.

He never did though, because it was in those moments and those alone that Jack would meet his eyes, a look that said more than words could.

Pitch did not lower his hand because he felt any sympathy toward either of them, it was because he had already gotten what he wanted.

Just for a moment.

Jack was many things, but he was in no way stupid.

When he realized that between his sister and himself, Pitch had a tendency to stay closer to him, he began to put distance between them.

Pippa was not happy with this at all. She would beg Jack to take her with him and always be offended when he told her in a sharp tone, "No."

"Oh, would you look at that." Pitch would coo in his most sardonic voice. "She's sad. What a _pity_." And he would cringe as Pippa cried and her face turned red and swollen. "How unbecoming, don't you think? Jack?"

If the boy was irritated at Pitch's verbal abuse, he gave no sign of it. It must have taken a hero's strength to turn his back on his ward the way he did, to ignore her wails as he stormed off into the woods.

Jack lead Pitch in circles through the trees for hours, going nowhere and painfully slow about it.

"We've already been this way, Jack."

"I've noticed you enjoy passing that particular stump, then."

"If you're lost, I could direct you back the way we came. You only have to ask."

"Do you suppose-"

Pitch was promptly _shut up_ by a wad of snow, crashing into his face.

He wiped away the frozen chunks and stared, bewildered at the _smile_ Jack wore.

Pitch could tell that the boy was desperately trying to withhold it, but Jack really was no good at something like that.

He didn't say anything to Pitch, just turned and kept walking.

If Pitch was silent afterward, it was only because he could not think of anything to say.

Pitch spent fewer and fewer nights under Pippa's bed. Instead he would loom at the foot of Jack's with his arms crossed and he really had to hand it to the boy, he never lost a wink of sleep over it. In fact, Pitch was sure that he got more sleeping done than when Pitch was in his sister's room.

"I find it adorable that you can take such easy comfort with me here. Adorable because I know your ease only stems from the fact that I am not able to frighten your sister."

Jack pulled the cover over himself and did nothing but stiffen as Pitch sat on the edge of his mattress.

It sunk under his weight and Pitch might have thought he saw Jack's breath hitch, but he had given up looking for the little signs.

He wanted more.

"Do I not frighten you, Jack? I am the boogeyman."

Jack was as still as the dead and Pitch thought that maybe he was losing his touch.

The silence went on for weeks.

Drawn out, wretched, and boring.

Weeks of Pitch moping and making Jack's life more difficult through the little things.

Weeks of Pippa scorned at her brother's desire to keep away from her.

It was enough to drive a Nightmare King mad.

Pitch was never really focused on anything anymore. The sun came up, he followed Jack far away from Pippa, watched him perform mundane chores, watched him put on foolish shows for the village children, watched him eat, watched him sleep...

He did a lot of Jack watching, actually.

So when Jack said one afternoon, in the chill of winter.

"Don't you have anywhere better to be?"

Forgive Pitch if it took a while to realize that Jack was addressing him.

Hell, Jack hadn't even looked at him when he said it, but it had to have been directed at him for they were alone in the winter wonderland.

"No, actually."

Pitch responded.

So went the first conversation he'd had with anyone in decades.

Pitch was not a _protector_. In fact, that was the last thing he ever wanted to be considered. He was the Shadow Man, the Nightmare King, the Boogeyman! He was no guardian angel and curse anyone that might mistake him for one.

He trudged through the fresh-fallen snow not as a partner or companion, but as a shadow to the wandering boy with no aim.

When Jack tripped over a particularly ugly root, Pitch only grabbed his arm out of reflex. Steadying the boy as he looked down at the rock and sharp sticks that littered where he would have fallen, Pitch didn't even realize what he had done until he had Jack back on his feet.

But Jack wasn't so steady, having managed to throw out his ankle.

Of all the stupid things he had ever done, it had taken a lonely branch to wound the boy.

"Good job." Pitch grumbled, staring down at where Jack's ankle had already begun to swell.

"Oh, shut up." Jack hissed under his breath.

Pitch thought that maybe, they were making progress.

"Well, let's get you home."

Wide whiskey eyes gazed up at Pitch and his offered hand. They held so many questions that Pitch could not answer, not even to himself.

When Jack took it, Pitch swore he felt a power seep through the touch, and he wondered if maybe Jack wasn't just a normal boy, but something _special_.

Pitch wasn't a protector. He told himself such as he let Jack lean against him on the long walk home.

He was neither partner nor companion, just a shadow and as often overlooked.

He could not ignore the extended glances the boy gave him.

But he tried.

After that, things were different.

The next time Pitch caused mayhem while Jack worked, instead of being crossly ignored, Jack slapped at the Nightmare King's hands where they just could not sit still.

Pitch was not very happy about that.

He tried to reassert himself, assuming that after helping Jack in his time of need, the boy thought he was _soft._

He put on incredible shows of shadows seemingly from hell upon Jack's walls when the boy turned in for bed, and Jack would watch them with the interest of a child in a storybook.

He always had a look in his eyes that questioned, 'What happens next?'.

Some nights later, Pitch crept spindles of darkness up Jack's leg while they were out at night, the moon doing little to light them.

Jack would look down at them and then at Pitch and raise an eyebrow, again, asking 'is that all?'.

It did not take long for Pitch to learn that little affected Jack in terms of fright.

So he tried something else.

A particularly chilly evening in the glow of a campfire, Jack's fan club gathered around the young man, laughing as he adorned tree branches as horns and told some fable or other, complete with pathetic moose imitation noises. Just as Jack rose up before the flame and cast his great, horned shadow on the wall behind him, Pitch warped the branches into fingers, clawed and reaching out as if to swallow them all up in it's grasp.

The children screamed and their screams dissolved into peals of laughter.

Jack's was the loudest.

Pitch could not figure out what he had done wrong. The fear was certainly there, he had felt the spike of it in each persnickety child, but they were not afraid.

They were having _fun_, and Pitch was certain that Jack was to blame.

Even when Pitch blew out the fire and swamped everything in darkness, the laughter grew louder and cut through the fear like a knife.

"Guys! The moose is gonna get us!" One child playfully jibed. "Hide behind Jack!"

"But Jack _is_ the moose!"

There were horrified gasps and giggles and Pitch found himself burying his face in his hand at the sight.

At some point in the fiasco, Jack had stopped laughing with the children and had started laughing at Pitch. The corners of his mouth were uplifted and tight, much like before when he would endlessly tease Pippa for her worries.

Pitch would get him back.

He just didn't know how.

One night while Jack slept and Pitch was bored (as he often was), the Nightmare King considered how he was going to make Jack fear him.

And he wanted Jack to fear him, he thought to himself that Jack's fear would taste so much sweeter than Pippa's or any other child's, it had to because that was the only explanation he could come up with for why he was drawn to the boy like a beacon.

When Jack slept, it was a disturbingly peaceful sight. One might forget while watching him that there was illness and evil in the world. Even Pitch felt trapped in a bubble of goodwill and promise, and it left a bitter taste in the back of his throat.

The temptation to touch Jack's chest was great, even greater at the prospect of feeling the heart that drove him.

He did, because Pitch does as he pleases, and the soft expanse of the boy's ribcage against the drumming of his heart was exhilarating when everything else was _boring_.

He was always so cold to touch.

Pitch wasn't sure, but he recalled humans being warm and fleshy. Jack was more of a spring river.

Revitalizing.

He watched his hand rise and fall with each breath the brunette took, and if his hand began to slide down, it was simply because Pitch was distracted by the curtain of eyelashes that rested on Jack's cheeks.

Lower his hand went, carelessly, until a noise interrupted his train of thought.

Jack had _moaned_.

It was with a hitched breath and not very loud at all, but not a second after, his eyes shot open, pupils blown wide as he stared up at Pitch in horror.

They both looked down simultaneously to where Pitch's hand rested, right over Jack's crotch.

"What the hell-"

"Shhhh..."

Pitch quieted him by rubbing slow circles against the boy's pants.

"Don't want anyone to hear now, do you?"

Jack had been about to ask him what the hell he was doing.

What the hell _was_ he doing?

The amazement in Jack's eyes said everything.

"That's why you never speak to me. Don't want to make a habit of it, do you? And if one should overhear us conversing... what might it look like to them? You are, after all, the only one who can see me."

Jack was shaking but it was not from fear and that riled the Nightmare King.

"Well Jack. You insisted on staying silent, so..." Pitch leaned in so close he could feel each quick breath from Jack's lips. "Be silent."

Jack shook in a pitiful attempt to keep his body from betraying him, but Pitch could already feel his failure beneath his gripping hand.

"You're horrible." Jack whispered.

"Good to know I haven't lost my _touch_."

Pitch emphasized the last word by grinding his thumb where he felt Jack grow hard.

Jack opened his mouth and the sound that came out was more pleasing to Pitch than it should have ever been.

_What am I doing_?

"Tut tut, none of that. What would darling Pippa think?"

Jack threw his hands out to strike at Pitch, but the Shadow Man knew by then to expect a fight from the the boy.

His elbow pinned one arm in an angle entirely Jack's own fault, while his hand gripped Jack's other wrist.

Jack had no hope of overpowering Pitch. He merely struggled and writhed to no avail.

It almost hurt Pitch to see the look in Jack's eyes, the one that scolded himself for letting his guard down around the strange guest he had acquired.

It was practically too easy to keep Jack pinned to the mattress, he hadn't even needed the assistance of his shadows.

It frustrated Jack, when he realized his defeat.

He could do nothing but lie there and worry at his bottom lip, showing off those marvelous teeth Pitch may or may not have noticed at some point.

How could he resist such a show?

Slipping his hand into Jack's pants and gripping his young but anxious erection, Pitch jerked him mercilessly, swooping down in a moment of weakness to taste that puckered, bottom lip.

When Jack came, Pitch swallowed the beautiful sound.

Pitch didn't stay after that, he slipped back into the shadows and crawled under Pippa's bed.

He didn't know what he would see in Jack's eyes, but he had a feeling it wasn't fear.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Hey everyone! Thank you all so much for the amazing reviews! Especially YOU! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! Please be warned is there some more dub-con in this chapter but it is very slight, in fact, practically consensual depending how you look at it. Other than that, enjoy. **

Pitch wasn't _avoiding_ Jack.

The Shadow Man had just decided he needed a bit of time for himself.

He wandered around.

He kicked rocks.

He cursed the moon when it laughed at him.

He wasn't sure how things had progressed from '_He sees me. I can't believe he sees me'_ to...

To what?

It was impossible to pretend that he had not admired so the way Jack's eyes contorted with dubious pleasure. Each ripple of muscle beneath the boy's skin still clung to Pitch's fingers like a disgraceful memory, one what whispered '_why is he so easy to touch?_'.

But the quiet, contemplative atmosphere grew awful and not even the shame of his weakness could keep Pitch from returning to that little warm house, having grown sick of his own company.

Standing before the door, he imagined that _everyone_ eventually grew sick of his company.

His fingers brushed the handle, imagining what it must feel like to walk in and be welcomed by a family. It must have been a warm and joyous moment of pride.

He slipped through the door, finding only the darkness and chill he had always known.

The house had a sense of abandonment to it. Laughter and love, common occupants, were nowhere to be found.

Had Pitch only been gone for a week? The air was settled and each bit of dust that glimmered in the light through the windows remained undisturbed.

It left an empty impression.

Pitch realized soon enough that it _was_ empty. The proud parents did not lurk in the quiet corners and Pippa's laughter was a distant echo.

And Jack... the swell of his belief in Pitch had faded into a dull ache and even with the sun shining brighter than it had in weeks, the house seemed darker than the throes of night.

Had they moved? Pitch thought to himself in horror, standing alone with no reason to press forward.

No, the furniture was how it always had been, just unoccupied. Worn and old, many years lived on the crooked chairs and the raggedy bench before the damp fireplace. Pitch prodded at the long forgotten ashes and let them collect on his fingertips. Running the grains of them between his forefinger and thumb, he could not determine where the ashes ended and his flesh began.

Pitch imagined that he had not always been complected as such, but such times were long forgotten in a sea of nightmares, one that swept him up and cast him ashore on a very lonely island where none could see his face for what it was.

Not even himself.

He settled in the kitchen on the three legged stool that did not so much as creak beneath his weight, and he began to suspect that he may not have been sitting on it at all.

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If Pitch sits on a broken stool and nobody is there to believe in him, does it give out?

He watched a branch bend beneath a gentle breeze, for it was weak and bent before anything. Past the window pane, where the snow had gathered and glistened, the birds flitted about and promised that the ice would surely melt with time.

He stared for hours and listened to the silent house and the little it had to offer him.

It was uncommon for the entire family to be out, usually Jack, as a strong and capable young man, was the one sent to run errands.

Pitch wasn't sure what to make of things, so he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

It was well into night, the birds long collapsed against each other for warmth, before Pitch was startled out of his reverie by a harsh _shove_.

"You sick Bastard!"

From where he landed on the floor, Pitch did not know whether to be relieved or terrified of the sight Jack made standing above him. A hatred burned in his eyes like wildfire, consuming everything Pitch considered recognizable about the boy.

"Oh really, Jack, you didn't seem so adverse when you were moaning in my mouth."

Pitch slid back to avoid the punch launched at him. The hard ground gave the impression of being trapped although the Nightmare King could have easily slipped away into the shadows.

He did not. He welcomed the confrontation the way a lonely child would welcome punishment if it meant a parent had finally turned an eye to them.

Clenching his fists, Pitch made to rise and face his accuser the way he faced many things in life...

looking down upon them.

He didn't even have time to gain footing before Jack barreled him down, slamming the Shadow Man back into his snare.

"I swear to _God_ if you ever so much as touched my sister..." Jack growled from above, pinning Pitch down with his body weight and seeming far more menacing than Pitch could have imagined him. The way Jack's tendons stretched and strained to hold him down was either the most revolting or the most enticing sight to ever befall Pitch.

"Don't be absurd. I have no desire to do such a thing." Pitch scoffed, rolling his eyes and shoving Jack off. It was pointless, the brunette simply threw himself forward once more, this time to slam Pitch down with his hands, short and callused from years of play.

They were cold where he gripped at Pitch's shoulders, pinning much the same way Pitch had done to him on that night.

"Oh, so it was just me?" Jack snapped, rage brimming in his eyes like the damned.

Pitched looked up at him and the glorious sight he made, flustered and panting... How could even a Nightmare King resist?

"Yes. It's just you." He had meant to sound cold but swore when his voice presented as passive.

Those hands loosened and Jack sat back on Pitch, straddling him, and made no move to stand.

At least the hatred in his eyes had fled.

"I never touched your sister. I would never touch your sister. I have no desire for anything like _that_."

Jack tilted his head, searching for something in Pitch's eyes, his mouth, the way his jaw clenched. He could have been looking for anything and the Nightmare King was unsure of what the boy would see.

"What makes me different, then?"

No longer restrained, Pitch reached a hand up to brush the boy's bare neck. He sat up, pushing Jack further down on his lap, and gripped his chin in his nimble fingers where they fit perfectly into place.

"I don't know."

This time he was slow in his capture of Jack's lips. The boy had plenty of time to run, pull away, knock his teeth out... but even as Pitch settled his hands on Jack's waist, he stayed perfectly still.

"What are you?"

Jack gasped out when Pitch pulled back, dragging his lower lip ever so slowly.

"I'm the Nightmare King."

Slipping his hands up and under Jack's shirt, the boy whispered,

"Is this a nightmare?"

Pitch's mouth stretched into a grin, exposing his pearl-razor teeth.

"Are you scared, Jack?"

The Brunette shook his head, with eyes never diverting from Pitch's mouth.

"Then it must not be. In fact... this might just be a wonderful dream." Pitch whispered, burying his nose in the crevice of Jack's neck.

He smelled like a a forest of freshly fallen snow. One devoid of crowds and critters, just the crunch of a single man's footsteps through the blanketing white.

"Whose? Mine or yours?"

The house was still silent, Jack's parents and sister had left on a trip to visit relatives for a few weeks.

Pitch asked why Jack had stayed behind when he knew that there would be no company but the boogeyman himself.

Jack had said that it was his idea for them to go, to celebrate and be merry together for the holidays and all the while, he would remain and look after things and keep the animals company.

Pitch considered that by 'animals', Jack meant him, which made little sense because the boy never ignored the village dogs when they came barking.

"You're attracted to me." Jack said one day at the dinner table, eating alone as Pitch did not need nor desire food.

"Let me guess, it's my boyish good looks."

Pitch rolled his eyes and fought back a threatening smile.

"Your face twitched. Admit it, you think I'm funny."

If Pitch thought that things would be awkward between the two of them after their skirmish on the kitchen floor, he was wrong.

In fact, in an empty household that Jack felt no reason to leave, things had become disturbingly domestic.

And it was all because of what Jack had called him while they sat on the cold floor.

"_That seems irrelevant."_

_Jack pushed himself free from Pitch's lap._

"_If you say so, Nightmare King. Hey, do you have a shorter name perhaps? 'Nightmare King' or 'Boogeyman' seems to be a mouthful." _

_Pitch stared up at him with a look he refused to recognize as awe. _

"_Pitch Black."_

_Jack reached a hand out, similar to how he had once done for him in the forest. _

"_Are you planning to sit there all night, Pitch?" _

_Pitch got up of his own accord, ignoring the offered help as stubbornly as he was capable. _

_'Pitch'_

_The way his name sounded tumbling from Jack's lips did something to him._

_He almost regretted sharing it._

"Pitch? You're staring at me again."

The Nightmare King was tempted to smack that smug look clean from the boy's face.

He settled for clutching his hair in one hand, slamming Jack over onto the table, and growling into his neck.

Pressing himself tightly against Jack's ass, the Shadow Man held the struggling boy in place, though with more ease than he imagined.

If Pitch hadn't known better, he might have amused that Jack wasn't really fighting back at all.

"Keep teasing me, see where it gets you." Pitch growled beneath his breath.

And because Jack had always been a complete and utter brat, he wriggled his hips just a bit and smirked at the Nightmare King as if to _dare_ him.

Pitch was baffled, it was as if the rage Jack possessed at the possibility that Pitch had been physically _affectionate_ with his sister morphed into pride that he could rile the Boogeyman himself. But then again, Jack had always been confidant in his own abilities; perhaps getting Pitch hard was just another victory.

He buried his nose between Jack's shoulder blades and rubbed his free hand down the curve of his thigh. Jack bucked at the attention and his knocked aside plate was forgotten, fists clenching and nails scratching at the soft wood of the table.

"One might think you _want_ me to fuck you, with how you present yourself so openly to me." Pitch growled, gripping where Jack was hard and pulling up, so that the boy had no choice but to lift his ass higher. "You forget that I am the King of Shadows and you are just a human boy, a nobody in a nothing village in the middle of _nowhere_."

Jack whimpered as Pitch grew hard against the cleft of his ass.

"Do not think too highly of yourself, or I may just be forced to remind you of your place."

The brunette cast a hazy gaze over his shoulder, fighting the fingers tangled in his hair.

"Big talk from the man who has nothing better to do than follow me around in circles."

Pitch's grip grew tighter.

"I am a king, Jack. Displaced, but a king, none the less."

Jack ground back into Pitch's dick, his thighs quivering from the sensations pulsing through them.

"I apologize, _your highness_." The boy drawled, and it was Pitch's turn to groan.

"People think me evil, clearly they have never met _you_."

There was nothing to stop Jack from crying desperately out when Pitch jerked him off against the table, ignoring his own pulsing erection.

He may have been weak... but he was not _that weak_.

Not yet.

"Don't you mind the emptiness?" Pitch asked the following afternoon, looming over Jack as he sat on the porch and kicked his feet.

"What do you mean?"

"The house. It's empty."

The birds and squirrels all slept through the coming weather, the unnatural silence in the frozen air deafening.

"I know. I did that on purpose, remember?"

It was easy to forget that there were other people in the world, other children that Pitch had once held hierarchy over.

It all seemed so long ago, a time when he did not have to scrape up fear like a dog begging for scraps.

It would have been sensible to follow Pippa, to get her believing in him again so that she could warn her friends and have them fear, until he was once again a spider with a web.

"So that you could confront me."

Pitch eyed the back of Jack's neck and thought back on the time when the brunette had no idea he existed...

It all seemed so dreadful.

"I might say that is..."

Pitch stopped, staring into the palm of his hand where a snowflake fell.

"Admirable."

He whispered, watching the sky sprinkle down on them.

Jack had also noticed the change in weather, his lips upturned.

"You like the snow too much." Pitch chastised.

The soft sprinkle became a flurry and with the wind howling and dancing, Jack stood and held his arms up to the sky, reaching out for something Pitch would never understand.

"It's nice."

"Is that all?"

Pitch found himself repeating words Jack had once said to him, before they ever held decent conversation.

"I like it. I can't explain why, I just do."

Jack was covered by only his thinnest coat and the air only grew colder as the minutes ticked by.

Pitch looked at him and he saw something more than human. More than a boy with a thirst for danger and a soft spot for his sister.

_I think I know the feeling._

He left Jack in the storm, creeping back under Pippa's bed, where he struggled to sort himself out.

When Pitch finally surfaced later that evening, he knew quickly that something was amiss.

To be more precise, Jack was nowhere to be found.

Pitch had calmly crept through each room, certain he would find the boy mussing with some trinket or other.

But he didn't.

Pitch didn't _panic_ but his steps did grow quicker with each empty room he came upon.

It was not a big house. There was no real place to hide.

Which meant...

When Pitch found Jack where he had left him, on the porch, curled into himself and shivering like the devil was in him, the Nightmare King felt a rage like none before.

He had Jack by the shirt before he could rethink his actions and threw him into the house.

"_What_ were you thinking!?" He barked, backing the brunette into a wall.

Pitch was almost certain if he wasn't there, clutching away at Jack's neck, the boy would not be able to hold himself up.

Those brown eyes shifted a bit before refocusing, enough to at least glare at the man that held him.

"I was watching the storm."

"People do not just watch storms, Jack. People _die_ in storms."

"Do they?" Jack bit back, pushing his shaking fist against Pitch's chest. "So why did you leave me out there?"

"What?"

"You ran off to sulk, like you always do. I guess it comes with being _dethroned_ and all, but you certainly didn't worry about me being out in the storm while you dealt with your emotional issues."

Pitch gaped at Jack, even when Jack bit his hand and shoved him away, he continued to gape.

It was not a jest and even if it had been, Pitch felt his shock slip into shame and since he refused to acknowledge shame, responded with a scathing tone.

"Even if I had thought you were stupid enough to do such a thing, it's not my job to protect you."

"Then why are you even here? What are you trying to accomplish?"

Pitch crept forward again and although Jack fought him, he had the boy crushed between his chest and the wall easily. The cold coming off him fed Pitch's fury like kindle, he caged the boy with his body, to keep him from running or maybe to keep the world away, and he squeezed hand-shaped bruises into Jack's pink wrists.

He always thought that Jack was cold to the touch.

Now, he was incomparable to something living.

"You are the only person who sees me."

Eyes cast down, the struggle drained from the brunette and his body went limp in his little cove.

"Then... I'm not special."

Pitch wanted to tell him he was wrong.

Instead, what he said was

"No, not really."

He wrapped the both of them in shadows and tried to keep Jack warm, but it was akin to feeding a dog that desired to starve.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: So it might be a bit longer uploading the next chapter, I am playing catch up a bit, but never fear, I will not leave you all hanging for very long I promise! **

That night, Pitch took Jack to bed.

It was not the fumbling molestation of their very first night and it was not the angry, playful banter of their kitchen escapade.

There was something far more solemn in the air as Pitch lowered Jack like a babe into his bed, as if offering a condolence that could not be spoken out loud.

Jack didn't utter a word of protest. He was cold and angry at Pitch and would not even grace him with a single jibe.

Pitch felt melancholic of the silence, letting it engorge the image of self-hate he had created since coming to know the boy. He knew that he had let Jack down, unaware the boy had given him that power until it was too late.

Because in a world that is boring and repetitive, it was no wonder Jack thought Pitch came from nowhere to sweep him away from the ungratified life he knew.

He was slow in his kisses that traveled Jack's neck, down into the dip of his shirt where grey fingers worked away each coat button.

It wasn't until Jack's chest was bare and shivering that the boy looked at him.

More so than at him, _into him_.

Pitch had come to hate the things he felt, because they were not the same pride and glory he once held when looked upon. Instead, a sense of duty and honor surged up inside him and he had to fight to keep it at bay.

He refused to recognize it, distracting himself in warming Jack; brushing his lips down his sides and along his stomach until even in his fit, Jack could not keep himself from gasping.

Piece by piece the clothes came off, until he was just a naked boy in a cot in the middle of nowhere.

He was meaningless to the world.

Pitch should have left, right then and there, and it terrified even him, the Nightmare King, to know that he couldn't if he wanted to.

Down he crept until he took Jack in his hand and slipped his lips around the boy's straining cock.

Jack bucked and begged.

He said, "Please... Pitch. _Please_." all while the Shadow Man took him in, sucking and hollowing his mouth until Jack's hands were in his hair and his toes curled in utter pleasure.

When Jack came, Pitch swallowed and kissed at his belly for more, and he was concerned that nothing would ever be enough.

He left Jack the next night, to terrorize the village children.

But he came back with the morning.

He always came back.

Things were quiet for a while after their fight.

Jack would make an effort to greet Pitch when he woke, but nothing more. He would offer Pitch food although he always declined. He would say goodnight when he wrapped himself in his blankets.

If Jack had thought Pitch to be the friend he always wanted, however misconstrued, he began to think himself very wrong.

Pitch did not offer Jack friendship.

He offered company and fleeting sexual experiences and nothing else.

Jack was bitter but mainly with himself for wanting Pitch to fill the role of companion, the likes of which he had never had.

Jack had always been a well-behaved child who kept after his sister with all the love in the world, but he had never known another person on an equal level. No village child or cousin played the part well and Jack spent a good deal of his life looking for the friend he was neither below nor above. Having long given up on his childhood fantasy, the brunette accepted his role as caretaker and child and entertainer.

It seemed he was everything but a person, sometimes.

Any ideas of Pitch and Jack on level grounds died quickly, because even displaced, Jack began to recognize the look in Pitch's eyes when he saw him as a peasant hardly worthy of licking his boot.

Pitch stayed because Jack acknowledged him. He stayed because Jack let him do what he pleased with his human body.

He stayed because it was that or solitude, and if Jack knew any truth, it was that the Nightmare King loved to hear himself _talk_.

He talked of his greatness (something Jack himself had never known) and his ability to do whatever he pleased (except be seen, Jack added).

Pitch was not a being bound by the rules of man. He desired to take all that he wanted and even that which he did not want, merely to boast that it was his.

"Then why don't you just have sex with me?" Jack would ask the quiet halls, from which the shadows would morph into his (not so) humble guest, destroying the illusion of fear Pitch claimed to have (again, Jack hadn't seen it).

"My, are you propositioning me?" Pitch would tease in the gritty way he tended to.

"You're already stuck with me, why don't you make the most of it? And even if you don't want me, which I know you do, why not take me to say that you have?"

Pitch slipped into the ground and appeared behind him, leaning close to whisper into his ear.

"Why so eager?"

Jack spun on his heel and into Pitch's grasp, clutching his dipping robe and dragging himself closer to the Shadow Man's mouth.

"I just think that for a King, you spend a whole lot of time pleasing others and no so much yourself."

Jack was punished for his insolence by being slammed chest first into a wall, Pitch's long digits digging into his ass and stroking his insides until Jack pleaded for Pitch to just do it, to have him right there.

"No."

Pitch would say with a single shake of his head and a look that promised pain at impertinence.

He left Jack to slide onto the floor, dripping and hard and very unsatisfied. Jack refused to touch himself. He let the throb slip away with time because he knew if he attempted to alleviate it, Pitch would no doubt come to mind.

In his spite, Jack suffered, because he had promised himself that he would not be beneath anybody.

Sometimes when Jack woke in the late of the night, he would find Pitch gone from his bedside.

The brunette would brave the cold and climb out of the promising covers to where his sister once slept.

There was a grief looming in the air and Jack could feel it tremble in his knuckles.

He sat on the unmade bed, listening for Pitch long before curling up on his side and slipping into sleep once more.

It wasn't until his breath was steady that Pitch would rise and pull the cover over him.

This happened frequently, Pitch detested to admit.

Sometimes he would brush the hair from Jack's forehead.

Sometimes he would purposely allow it to hang there, a punishment to himself for being so weak.

He could imagine the ridicule from the Man in the Moon or the Guardians should they ever hear of his tender spot for a human boy.

But how could he be blamed if they could see the glitter of Jack's lower lip? The way it sagged when he slept and barred a single peek of his wet tongue or how it would stretch into a smile more promising than an army.

It was simple really.

Pitch had two options.

He could leave... step out and walk away and never see Jack again. Wander the forests alone and watch time and the people bound by it circle around and repeat the past, a story with the same ending, just written differently.

Or he could sweep the boy up and hide him away. In a cave far from the eyes of others, the two of them could have something all of their own and not subject to the opinions of others. Pitch could keep him until...

Until...

Well, until Jack died.

And then it occurred to Pitch, Jack was going die one day.

He was going to grow up, get married, have whelps of his own, get old, and then _die_.

Pitch stood alone in the hall, as far away from Jack as he could force himself, and closed his eyes.

_What then?_

The Storm never really stopped.

It raged past the windows, sometimes as silent as death and others a screaming, vengeful creature digging its claws into the dirt. Pitch would tell Jack stories about the Dark Ages, where shadows crept in every corner and everything was pitch black.

"Pitch Black? Really?"

And Pitch would wipe the mirth from the boy's face with a well-timed swat before continuing his story.

It wasn't until Jack would ask how it all ended that Pitch would clam up and postulate that Jack was too old for bedtime stories and that he was not a babysitter.

Sometimes Jack would _remind_ him that Pitch was the one who had insisted on telling such fables in the first place, but sometimes Jack wouldn't waste his breath.

He had an idea of how the story ended.

"Let me guess." Jack followed close behind, staring up at the slim back of Pitch's neck. "The Nightmare King met a handsome lad with which he had an incredibly romantic escapade in the winter woods."

Pitch stopped, abrupt enough for Jack to run right into him. The touch was warm and Jack might have hesitated before stepping back, regretful and again, cold.

"You sound jealous of this lad."

A soft pink dusted Jack's cheeks, and the mirth in the Nightmare King's eyes made only to worsen the blush.

"I might be. Sounds like _he's_ having a marvelous time."

Angry, at possibly Pitch or more likely, himself, Jack retreated from the room and his own feelings.

The inconstancy of human emotion would never cease to baffle the Shadow Man.

When the storm finally passed and the odd couple were no longer confined to the cabin, Jack bounded right into the piles of snow, bare-footed. It sank under his steps up to his calves, and that only made the boy hiss with further glee.

"When they have to saw your feet off, I will leave you."

Pitch called from the doorstep, struggling to mask his amusement.

The cold did nothing to phase the boy, celebratory in his new-found freedom.

"You wouldn't leave me. You'd be too lonely." Jack called back from where he rolled, coating himself in a healthy blanket of winter.

With the wind long gone and the sun blinding through the dead trees, Pitch thought for a moment that Jack looked beautiful. His hair caught the light like a halo, but not of angels, of something Pitch would prefer.

The damned, perhaps.

How long, Pitch wondered, until Jack paid for the days they had spent together, and what would be the price?

Surely one did not return to a state of normality after courting a nightmare king. It was akin to tampering with dark forces (if Pitch were humble about it) and that never ended well.

Not for humans, who were so frail and sessile .

He wanted to warn Jack of all the negative energy he was gathering, but Jack would probably dismiss such talk as superstition.

Which says a lot about his character if he would say such a thing to _Pitch Black's _face.

When Jack knocked Pitch from his depreciating thoughts with a snowball, it occurred to the Shadow Man that as opposed to shutting him up, this act of war called for his company.

When had they come so far?

Jack smiled and it seemed that he had forgotten all anger with his companion. Jack smiled because he was happy, and maybe Pitch was missing something, maybe he would never understand what their bond was founded on.

Maybe he could, for once, not question it.

It might have been a show of what little faith Jack had when he turned away, prepared to stomp around like an ignored child vying for a parent's attention.

He did not anticipate the return fire that crashed into the back of his head.

Jack gaped at Pitch and Pitch smiled in a way that promised many horrible things, each in a handful of snow.

The two went to war and each lost and gained something in the white afternoon.

Jack proved to have far superior aim but Pitch was not above slipping through shadows to get the drop on the brunette.

Pitch might even confess to having had fun, if Jack twisted his arm hard enough.

Jack however, appeared to have been touched by felicity. The traces of anger that sank into his face smoothed out and even when the two of them grew tired, Jack rested against Pitch's shoulder without aggravated commentary.

"I believe I was the victor this time around." Said Pitch, looking down at the mop of brown hair pressed against him.

It was as if he had forgotten how to feign disinterest.

"A victory through underhanded, cheap-shots, perhaps." Jack laughed, pressing impossibly further against Pitch and the warm promise of his breath. He had come to realize the most important thing and he kept it close to his rapid heart.

Jack gained a knowledge that he had previously tried to convince himself was not important.

Desperate to brag about having one-up, he peeled his face from Pitch's robe and met his eyes.

"But I think my reward is greater."

Pitch rose a quizzical brow, swatting away the ice that clung to Jack's hair. He used the moment as an excuse to brush it aside, wasted, for it fell right back over his forehead as soon as Pitch had drawn his hand back.

"And what is that, Jack?"

"I know now that you lied to me."

"I lie a lot, Jack." Pitch scolded, searching for an answer in his eyes of hot rum. "You are going to have to be more specific."

Jack shook his head and laughed, the birds singing in spring held nothing over such a chime.

"No, I don't."

Jack didn't waste his time falling asleep in his own bed. He went right to Pippa's and drifted off with his hand dangling over the side.

Pitch found himself staring at it, from his little home under the mattress.

He only brushed his own against it twice the entire night.

Pitch would accept his small victories.

On a chilly morning, Pitch rhetorically asked Jack how he could see him if he feared nothing.

Jack confessed that he always felt fear when he did dangerous things, but was never afraid.

After all, "What is fun without a touch of fear?"

Pitch would then ask Jack if he believed in him.

"Seeing is believing, isn't it?"

Jack had found himself wound in Pitch's arms, the two of them crushed together on Jack's mattress. The Nightmare King smelled of fresh ash and smoke; the boy inhaled him like a narcotic and refused to leave the bed.

Instead, they basked in the stream of sunlight that touched the covers from the window and drank it desperately. With December well underway, such little pleasantries were more and more difficult to come by.

"Perhaps for humans, that is the case."

The fingers trailing through Jack's hair calmed him, kept him still. They were a reassuring graze and he was grateful for it, as he was all of the small gestures of compassion Pitch offered despite his uncertainty.

"What about other spirits, then? Wouldn't you believe in something you saw and spoke to?"

"That is dependent upon how believed in the spirit is by humans."

Jack frowned and brought himself closer to Pitch, pressing his bare skin into the man's robe. It felt like a finer silk than any he'd ever known. Clenched in his fingers, Jack thought that he could very well be dreaming, dreaming of ever idle banter and angry tilt.

It made so much more sense than the Boogeyman cradling him close.

"So if human's don't believe in a spirit, other spirits can't either?"

"Not exactly."

Pitch hummed to himself for a moment, considering how to explain their nature.

"I myself would be a good example." He began tentatively, "Once a strong and powerful spirit, the less I was believed in, the weaker I became. The other spirits watched me dwindle like a candle having run it's course." His tone grew clipped and Jack found himself placing a placating hand on Pitch's jaw.

"But the spirits knew I existed, they could see me easily. I have since, run into smaller spirits of less popularity that have gone on not seeing me. If the people of the world still believed in my existence the way they once had, I would never go unseen."

Jack nodded slowly, unsure if he was following.

"Then, how did the Guardians see you when you first came into existence? They could not have known of you."

The streak of sun on the blanket diminished, swallowed by a sea of clouds.

"Actually... I came first."

Jack grimaced as the streak vanished entirely, leaving the room as cold as any other. He sorted through what Pitch had told him, and after a moment of trying to get his bearings on it, decided it was much too complicated. He finally chose to respond with

"I think that's awful."

"What aspect?"

Pitch drawled.

"Every one. Something's existence should not be dependent upon the thoughts of others."

Jack said 'something' but Pitch swore he heard his own name in his words, warm and passionate and housing a quiet fire.

"Existence should be determined by what you make of yourself, what you _mean_ to yourself. Living a life based around meeting the standards of others? It seems more of a curse."

Pitch didn't like the answers Jack came up with, they challenged a great deal of what he had come to accept as truth.

Now, even the Nightmare King did not know what it meant to believe.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: A few things to note to those who have inquired. This fanfic is supposed to be parallel to the movie, everything that happened in the movie still occurs, this fic merely runs its course alongside it.**

**On another note, the chapters are supposed to be broken down into segments, of which I sadly discovered on recently, did not keep when published. So I will be going back soon and re-segmenting them. I deeply apologize for any confusion this may have caused. **

He should have known that a confidant Jack was a dangerous Jack. And a Jack that knew he was special to Pitch, well, that was by far the most dicey.

It shouldn't have been so effortless for the boy to catch Pitch off guard. He was shorter and weaker, the King of Shadows should not have been so easily cornered and ravaged, the boy persistent in his kisses.

Pitch did not mind them (he was incredibly responsive in each occurrence) but being pushed around by an adolescent human did little for his already withered reputation.

"You are eager." Pitch murmured into Jack's lips, soft and so pliant for him.

"You're making me eager." The boy could not keep his hands still, darting them into every fold of fabric in reach and scraping at it like a dog to a door, each nail whispering _let me in_.

Pitch closed his eyes and let the scent of fresh-fallen snow wrap him up. It had been so long since the Shadow Man had been embraced by something that wasn't darkness. The pink of Jack's lips and the depth of his eyes forced Pitch to keep his own clenched tightly.

He couldn't look at him. If he did, his resolve might crumble and Pitch would have Jack, every way he could imagine.

In the hall with the whipping wind shaking the walls. In Jack's bed, under Pippa's bed, the counter, the table, the bench, and still Pitch thought that it wouldn't be enough.

Jack touched the line of Pitch's jaw and traced it, admired it. He stared down at the sculpting of his grey lips and sharp chin and Jack wondered to himself if Pitch was real.

He thought that he couldn't be, not something so perfect and beautiful. Jack's hand pressed against Pitch's warm skin and each tremble of the Nightmare King's eyelashes promised that he felt each caress.

_You can't be real_.

A voice deep in Jack whispered, the same one that told him Pitch wasn't his friend or that Pitch did not care about him.

Pain twisted in the brunette's stomach and the hand that tended to the truest expression he'd ever seen Pitch wear, _sank._

It descended past him and the wall Jack's fingers met was painfully cold.

He jerked back and cried out, hands both raised and fingers shaking.

Pitch's peace became a memory and his eyes filled with first rage and then, grievance.

"You..." He began, Jack stared at his fists as if they betrayed him, as if he would cut them off if it could undo the moment.

"You stopped believing in me."

Jack swallowed and his face twisted in agony, one that bubbled up from inside him and wrapped around his heart.

"No Pitch, I swear."

Pitch was slow in his steps, toward Jack, and then around him. Past him, to the kitchen, anywhere else but where they were.

"Pitch! I'm sorry!" Jack yelled, padding behind him and grabbing the man's shoulder. The relief in both his and Pitch's eyes could not be disguised when his grip met solid flesh and silk.

"I believe in you Pitch. I swear I do. I don't know what happened I just know..."

His fingers bit into Pitch and it might have hurt, but the Shadow King was not paying attention. His focus was on the rim of wetness in Jack's eyes. It was nothing but a glimmer, but enough to make Pitch realize that Jack cared for him, even if he was neither what Jack had been hoping to one day have nor what was good for him.

"I just know that you're here."

Pitch let Jack wrap his arms around his shoulders. The nose buried into his neck was runny and wet and Jack told himself, over and over again in his head.

_This is real. He is real. This is real. He is real._

_This is real._

* * *

Jack wished he could say that the moment of doubt had not shoved a wedge between the two of them, but Pitch had grown distant and as the days passed, Jack found himself alone at the table, counting the hours that they had to fix this.

Which is where Pitch found him, as well.

"My family is coming back soon." Jack whispered, Pitch thought such words should not be spoken in his hopeless tone.

"Do you not miss them?"

He knew why Jack considered such news to be disheartening, Pitch just chose to ignore it.

"Yeah... I guess I do."

Their slice of heaven (if one could call it that) had ran it's course. All that was left was for them to sweep up the leftovers and Pitch wasn't sure if he could _do_ that.

He'd thought he knew pain. Years of isolation and exile had defined him but true pain was feeling Jack's hand slip through him... feeling the belief he had been feeding on flicker like a candle in a breeze.

Pitch was not ready to be without the boy's touch.

Judging by how Jack ran his toe in circles on the floor, the Nightmare King was certain that he was not alone in his sentiment.

"When are they due back?"

He tried to sound casual about it, as if the world wasn't taking back the closest thing he ever had to happiness.

"Tomorrow."

Pitch nodded, slowly, habitually.

There was so much silence between the two of them, one could fill a house with it.

Or a cabin in a nowhere place.

When Jack settled down in bed for the last time in his sister's cot, Pitch lay next to him.

The fit was tight and uncomfortable and together they stared at the ceiling, the walls, anywhere but at each other.

Far into the night, Pitch played his puppets around them. They were the coils of misery and they hugged the walls as if embracing them, each seemingly a being of compassion or possibly hatred.

Pitch could not tell the difference.

"It's just like before."

The Nightmare King hadn't known that Jack had his eyes open; that they had never closed in all of these hours.

"But it's different."

"Just like before, but different." Pitch chided, trying to ignore the arm that wrapped around his waist. An arm that was cold and shaking, but touching him.

Ever since the incident, each time Jack reached out, Pitch feared.

He feared that the touch would never come.

"Yeah... it seems... sadder."

"Does it?"

Pitch couldn't do it. He couldn't give up the only thing he had left.

Even if they were mere moments with a human whose life would ultimately be nothing more than a smear on the world, Pitch didn't ask for much.

Just this.

Please... give him this.

And then it occurred to Pitch how foolish he was for wanting and not _taking_.

That's why he went with option two, and the shadows fell over them like a casket to demon them away.

* * *

"What the hell are you doing?" Jack screamed, hardly heard over the howls of wind.

The shadows brought the two of them from their shared cot into the peaks of the mountain, where the snow was abusive and temperatures fatal.

Jack was barefoot, but this time his toes curled up in agony against the ice.

With nothing but the stolen blanket to warm his hot blood, Pitch swept Jack up in his arms and into a cave that had grown unfamiliar these past months.

"You have five seconds to explain yourself." Jack snarled through his full-body shivers. He probably would have ripped himself from Pitch's arms if he hadn't faced the threat of the frozen floor.

"This is my home. Or at least, it was for a very long time."

The walls were covered in webbed cracks and a stillness hung about the place despite the whipping winds outside. It was far lonelier than he remembered and the cold seemed unbearable even to the Nightmare King.

Jack was a frozen mess.

"Why are you doing this to me?" The boy croaked, burying himself into Pitch in search of warmth.

It was all going wrong.

Pitch never wanted to _hurt_ Jack.

Everything was wrong.

* * *

The cave may have been cold but it was dry, dry enough to start a fire after a few trips back for supplies.

Each time, Pitch made a point to leave Jack, and each time, Pitch worked quickly, fearing he would find Jack dead in that wretched hole in the mountain.

With a fire blazing and the blanket tucked around the two of them, Jack found the energy to smash his clenched fist into Pitch's nose.

"You're crazy. You get mad when I stay out in the storm and then you bring me here wearing practically nothing. What are you trying to do? Satisfy yourself by killing me personally?"

Pitch gaped while he rubbed his throbbing nose.

"And just when I thought you actually cared about me."

Jack always was good at sulking, that was one thing he and the Nightmare King had in common.

Between the two of them it was surprising they ever got anywhere.

But once in a while, a spike of courage (or insanity) would surge through one of them and they would move forward a step, even if only to jump back two.

"Jack."

The brunette would not face him.

"I love you, Jack."

* * *

Jack was human.

Jack could not survive locked away in this cave.

He needed food, a bed to sleep on, social contact.

Pitch kept reminding himself this while their naked bodies warmed each other beneath the blanket.

The ground was hard and cold but where their skin caressed there were flames. Jack had worked Pitch out of his robes with that silver tongue of his and crawled into his lap as if the spot had always been reserved for him.

The shadows were no long despairing coils but reflections of Jack's back arching in short, moan-accompanied bursts. Pitch held his thighs and his waist and anywhere else he could touch and where he couldn't touch, he wrapped his shadows in the way they once embraced the walls.

"Pitch... Oh God if you keep doing that."

Jack would stammer between clipped breaths.

"Jack..." Pitch would repeat again and again as if the name alone could explain more than any words.

He praised him in the firelight. Where each orange glow across Jack's pale belly begged to be touched, to be worshiped.

Jack believed in him. He believed in him because he could feel him. His skin, his nails, his hair wrapped up in Jack's pretty pink fingers...

He believed what he could taste, what he could love, the body that slid against Jack was real.

And the reverse was the same.

Pitch knew this body, became accustomed to it.

It was not a scary bedtime story.

It was not a romanticized novel.

And of all the glory Pitch had ever known, nothing felt the way it did to have Jack watch him with his lust-blown eyes.

For the first time, Pitch had a believer that he could believe in.

Pitch recalled a time when he promised to fuck Jack over a table.

With his bare back against the rock floor and Jack lowering himself agonizingly slowly onto him, it occurred to Pitch that he no longer knew the difference between a dethroned king and a nothing boy.

They had been stripped of everything but the color of their skin, which Pitch found the contrast of to be the most perfect thing he had ever seen.

He should have asked Jack to stay with him forever, when his passions were high and his answer could be influenced by Pitch taking his dick in his hand and jerking it as his thoroughly warmed thighs bounced against his hips. Jack would have probably agreed to anything, a twisted picture of pleasure with his slackened jaw and quivering lips.

Jack would give up his entire life to be Pitch's for nothing more than a moment in his.

"Oh Pitch..." The brunette thrashed, leaking all over Pitch's hand and his belly.

How could Pitch ask such a thing?

Pitch came shortly after Jack, burying himself so deep he got lost in his lover and was unwilling to find his way back.

He stayed right there with Jack in his winding arms, where he glowed in a ring of fire that was forgotten behind them.

Pitch committed the image to memory.

Wrapped up in each other, Jack slept more soundly than a babe.

He did not even stir when Pitch leaned close and murmured against his cheek.

"You will forget me soon enough."

* * *

Jack woke alone, in his sister's bed.

He thought maybe it had been a dream, but the ache in his back and the love bites riddled across his naked chest served as a reminder that Pitch had loved him in a far off cave.

He looked for Pitch beneath the bed, in the kitchen, his room, the porch, the woods...

He called his name loudly and did not care who heard him.

Pitch was gone.

He waited for the Nightmare King to come home from a day of frightening small children, but he didn't.

When the door creaked on it's hinges, Jack hated himself for being disappointed that it was Pippa that leapt into his arms and not his lover.

"Jack! Jack! I missed you!" She cried and nuzzled against him. "Did you miss me? Where you lonely?"

Jack smiled but it was a poor imitation of the one he once wore.

"Nah, I was fine. In fact, I made a friend."

Pippa crunched her nose in offense that Jack had not been _lost_ without her.

"Where are they? I want to meet them."

The boy kept his breath steady, requiring a strength he never knew he had.

"They're gone. They had to go away. But they will be back."

"How do you know?"

Jack's answer held a truth he found to be absolute.

"Because he cares about me."

* * *

The shadows on Jack's walls were dead, nothing but the barren trees of winter.

He watched them for hours, waiting for the twist or churn of character that promised Pitch was near.

Nothing happened, they lay limp against the walls and the floors and Jack felt lost even in all the familiarity.

He twisted and turned and sighed to fill the silence.

His fists in knots, Jack turned his back on the shadows and sank beneath his blanket. The absolute dark did nothing to ease the emptiness, rather reminded him of the blackness of Pitch's robes piled in the cave.

When dawn cracked through the window, Jack let himself crumple on the floor beside his bed. His eyes past sunken and rage coursing through his blood.

_Where is he? Why did he leave me?_

He moaned into the floor and crawled under his bed. The fit was tight and it was impossible for Jack to get comfortable with the ground beneath him and the cold around him, but it hid him from the light of the morning.

He finally slept, cramped in the stale shadow.

* * *

The forest was far more quiet now that Jack walked it alone. It became a habit to go off, leaving Pippa sulking back home, and watching the ice fall in clumps from the frozen branches.

He liked the days when it was him and Pitch and nobody else, even before he spoke to Pitch, Jack enjoyed not having to entertain anyone.

In fact, He found the Nightmare King to be the entertaining one with his witty commentary. How Jack did not laugh at some of Pitch's quips was incredible, especially considering Jack's easy sense of humor.

The new-found solitude was far more disheartening than before he ever knew Pitch, and many were not aware of it but Jack had always been a bit lonely. It was deeper then, more rooted with reason. Before, Jack never knew what it was that made him lonesome but now, he knew _exactly_ what it was, and who it was, that he missed.

Jack imagined it might be something like how Pitch felt while Jack was ignoring him to his face.

The only thing at that point that could outweigh the loneliness was the guilt. To know that he had purposely subjected Pitch to such cruelties in hopes to drive him away, it made Jack hate himself.

Jack had enough time to convince himself that Pitch had left because Jack was not good for him. Jack was not a good person. He had been given the chance to rescue the Shadow Man from his solitude but like the average man to a street beggar, he had turned away.

Pitch loved him, he had told him in the deepest, most convincing tone.

No one could ever tell Jack that Pitch did not care for him, just as no one could convince Jack that his own feelings were anything but real.

He just wanted for Pitch to know that, but in his haste to claim the Nightmare King, Jack had forgotten to tell him.

* * *

Pitch lasted a month.

A month of peering into the minds of children everywhere and drinking the fears of any nature he came upon.

The darkness in his heart sweltered and he drew from it the energy to terrorize people, families, entire towns.

As as he grew stronger from his scavenging, nothing filled the hole ripped through him that belonged to Jack.

A month for the snow to grow thin and ice thinner, with spring looming just around the corner, Pitch decided that he would see Jack one more time.

Before the snow was gone.

He would not interfere in his life again. He wouldn't so much as say hello to the boy.

He just wanted to see him.

He thought it would be easier for Jack that way.

Also, he could not bare to learn that Jack had already stopped believing in him.

Doubtful, but not worth the risk.

He made his way to the small village in the middle of nowhere and peaked through Jack's frosted window.

Nothing.

He saw no sign of Jack through the glass and neither of Pippa.

So the Shadow Man went searching.

Any thoughts of hiding from Jack flew out the window when he heard the crack of ice.

* * *

"Jack, I'm scared."

Pitch knew that she was.

He stood behind Pippa on the paper-thin ice as the blackness of fright clawed across her frail body.

Arms held out to either side of her, what he would do to be able to _catch_ her should she fall.

But she didn't believe in him.

Not anymore...

He looked at Jack and Jack at him, and the fear was not Pippa's alone but Jack's as well.

Jack was afraid.

For the very first time, Pitch felt the flicker of it pulsating through the ice.

It left him stronger than he had been in decades and he finally knew the taste of Jack's terror.

It was not satisfying.

In fact, Pitch _hated_ it.

"Jack..." He whispered, eyes never leaving the boy's glistening brown. "I can't save her."

Of all the shadows and all the darkness, Pitch was nothing but a useless fool.

Jack nodded... slowly... desperate not to startle his dear Pippa.

"It's okay." The boy whispered, reaching for a curved stick forgotten on the ice.

"Jack..." Pitched warned. "Don't you dare."

"It's gonna be okay."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Hello everybody! I love reading every single one of your reviews! Thank you all so much for your devotion, here is the next chapter, I wasn't planning to post it for two more days but I could not resist. I hope you enjoy it. **

The way Pitch's arms fit around Jack told a story.

It spoke of the nights spent watching, pacing, and waiting. A tale where one who lived to hate turned away and found something to love. They pressed into Jack's sides where they once promised to stay, before Pitch left with no intention of coming back.

But he did come back. He always came back.

The Nightmare King blamed himself.

Jack was cold to touch but he always had been. As the sun sank behind the horizon and the moon came out to play, the wind grew quiet and the night was as still as the dead.

As still as Jack.

When the boy slid under, it was Pitch that felt a cold and wretched pain sweep over him. He had reached out, but his hand had not been quick enough. Pitch stood on the spidering ice and was utterly useless.

Now he slept with Jack, though he never actually slept.

He crept in the darkness past the ice and wrapped himself around Jack's stiff body.

They were alone together again.

Pitch had wanted nothing else for so long, but not like this.

Never like this.

"Please." He whispered in the voice of the spirits, a sound that could not be heard in the freezing water.

"This can't be the end. Not for someone who had so much to offer the world."

Jack's eyes had thankfully closed upon his departure from life. Pitch was unsure if he could handle seeing them with the warmth of whiskey gone.

He blamed his own indecision and, although he knew Jack would scorn him for it, he blamed Pippa.

Precious Pippa who Jack served like a knight to a queen. Always giving and attending and saving, all for one child who offered nothing to the world.

Why did Jack have to sacrifice his joy and care because of one girl?

Why couldn't he ever just listen to Pitch for _once?_

Pitch saw Jack for what he was. A lover, a friend, a _guardian_.

In the blackness, the Nightmare King looked up at the moon and called out.

"That's it, isn't it? You want him for yourself... don't you?"

It angered him endlessly, to think the moon would take all he had away.

And then he heard the answer, the answer that enraged him more than he thought possible.

_No._

Pitch kept Jack tightly to him, his hands clenched against the boy's iced skin.

"Why not!?"

He roared.

"Is Jack not exactly what you look for in your wretched quest for truth and light? Does he not offer children guidance and affection and care?"

The moon stayed silent, nothing but a dull glimmer beyond the ice.

As much as Pitch hated the thought of Manny having Jack, he wanted nothing but to look into Jack's eyes once again and see them glitter with life and love and promise.

"You've taken everything from me." He whispered in the bleak water. "You owe me this much."

"Look into his heart."

Silence.

"I know my promises mean so little but I swear to you."

Silence.

"Look into his heart and I know you will find something worth salvaging!"

Pitch gazed down at the flutter of eyelashes that kissed Jack's cheeks.

"I believe in him."

He kissed his tender temple.

"_I believe in him_."

Jack's hair began to drain of it's rich, earthen color.

* * *

When Jack rose from the ice, his chest burst forth like a flower in bloom, a chrysalis birthing, the nothing becoming _something_ in a rupture of time and space.

Jack opened his eyes and it was the world turning for the first time.

Pitch had never known a sight so beautiful.

The boy he loved came back with a stale and much needed breath. Maybe the air tasted sweet or perhaps he only inhaled out of habit, but the unmistakable rise and fall of his chest drove Pitch to his knees.

The ice was cold where he sat, having followed Jack up from the darkness and into the frozen night.

Jack was different, but the white of his hair still swept across his face as it always had. The pink of his skin paler but lacking the grey shadows of the dead.

And his eyes...

What once were warm glasses of whiskey one could get lost in, now a blue that rivaled the sky at noon. Pitch could not sink into them because they were not deep or hidden, they were shallow and exposed.

In Jack's new eyes, there was a confidence and a commitment to love and laughter, worn on his sleeve as if he had always known such things were what he offered the world.

Pitch missed the blanket of his liquor gaze, but found the sincerity of his new set appropriate.

It was all very 'Jack'.

"Oh Jack..." Pitch whispered, his words freezing as they touched the air. "I thought I'd lost you."

Jack stepped forward, more than stepping, searching. He wandered toward Pitch with nothing but the sound of ice being born under each bare-footed step.

When a spirit has another being pass through them, the only way to describe the feeling is as having a part of oneself replaced by that creature's existence. To feel a part of one's existence doubt itself for what it is, is not a feeling any spirit desired to experience.

When Jack stepped through Pitch, slowly and searching, Pitch did not feel how he once had when children ceased to acknowledge his existence.

He did not feel a part of himself slip away, create a false identity in the moment they _couldn't touch_.

When Jack stepped through him... Nothing changed. Nothing except the agony that ripped into Pitch's stomach.

He felt nothing because Jack was already a part of him, his body knew Jack so well that in the moment they shared a space together, there was nothing new to discover.

His body simply accepted Jack as an element of itself, no questions.

But Pitch however, had plenty of questions.

"Jack... Jack!"

He called, watching the now snow-haired boy reach down to retrieve a familiar piece of wood.

"Why can't he _SEE ME_!?"

Pitch howled, his voice echoed in the forest by the creatures of fear that haunted the trees.

"What did you do!?"

The moon stared at him with eyes that _mocked_.

"Is this your idea of a joke?"

Pitch wished that his voice had not cracked, that his eyes had not filled with desperation as he followed where Jack played, spinning and laughing the way he once had.

Untainted by Pitch's presence over the last few months.

"You really had to have him..." His voice soft and vulnerable. "The only thing that was mine... and you had to have him."

Pitch wanted Jack to turn around, to wonder where his Nightmare King had gone. He missed so desperately the sound of his name on Jack's lips. The way his smile lit up when he saw that Pitch had come home from a day of terrorizing village children...

Home to him.

But Jack didn't. He didn't look for Pitch, call out to him, or appear for even a moment to feel lonely without his company.

He just laughed and Pitch loved the sound but no pain had clung in his mouth so thickly as the pain such a sound brought.

"I will get you for this, Manny."

Pitch's expression grew tight and vapid.

"I will get you, you and your precious guardians and everything you care about. I will take _everything_ from you."

His gold eyes sat in puddles of red, his rage split the ice in a web of cracks and as Jack flew away into the stars, the ice splintered and became nothing.

Pitch sank into the lake again, only dreadfully alone.

Jack was alive. He would go see Pippa because she was his first priority.

Maybe afterward, Jack would come looking for him, and he would be where he left him...

"Just like you have taken everything from me."

Waiting.

* * *

Pippa died young.

Not dreadfully young, in which people accuse the world of being cruel. But she did pass one early winter morning, her hair still a rich chocolate and her skin smooth and flawless.

It wasn't cruel so much as unfair.

Pitch watched her get taller and frailer, sicker and finally, dead. In her youth with Jack no longer by her side, the young girl succumbed to her fears and Pitch was there to pick up the pieces...

Only to devour them.

Jack didn't come back to the lake for a very long time. Long after Pitch had given up waiting and began what he considered to be his final strike against the man in the moon. When Jack came back, Pitch had already brought the village to it's knees with fear.

He hated to admit it but the death of Pippa had been the breaking dam, the risen light. Often the death of the young serve as terrible omens in such times, even more so when the victim was known for their plague of nightmares.

Pitch attended the funeral to fan the flames of dread that webbed through the crowd. Fear that her death was some unnatural cause. Fear that the winter would bring more suffering. Fear that the devil kept a close eye on their precious town.

They were not entirely wrong.

Pitch did keep an eye on them, and there was a suffering alright.

Pitch suffered a lot, in fact.

The day Pippa was buried so happened to be the day Jack came home.

Pitch was deep in the shadows when the newly appointed frost spirit tip-toed through his old village. The Nightmare King watched the soft sway of his neck, long and pink and lacking in the many love bites Pitch once left him with.

Little they did to stake claim, mementos already long faded.

Jack's feet were as bare as the day Pitch loved him, his toes meeting the fresh snow with not so much as a footprint left behind.

He was a part of it now, or maybe he always had been.

Twenty years could pass, _did_ pass, and Jack was still capable of churning up the contents (metaphorically, of course) in Pitch's stomach.

He came back while Pippa was lowered in her hand-carved casket, a symbol of the townsfolk's love for her and, Pitch knew, their love for the boy that gave his life to give her those twenty more years.

Nobody forgot Jack.

They talked about how much he loved the snow, the cold, everything winter brought.

They hummed that he must be watching over darling Pippa, must have been even after all of these years.

But he hadn't been.

After leaving him behind on the ice, Pitch did _look_ for Jack.

He looked for him and when his search was barren, he clung to the younger Overland's side in hopes of his return.

Pitch long accepted that Jack would not return for him... but to imagine the boy would leave his sister behind? The Jack he once knew would scorn the thought!

Not this Jack. And even though so many things about this new boy reminded him of those winter days only two decades old, Pitch could not convince himself that the person he knew could shift into what he saw.

Jack walked through the village with his staff on his shoulder and an uncomfortable look about his face.

He came back to where it all started. It was to be expected that he should feel remorse when facing the past, but the young spirit never seemed anything other than resigned.

Pitch watched him from every corner darkness touched simultaneously as he dodged through crowds of villagers, pointless as it seemed that he was as invisible to them as Pitch always had been.

_Oh, what delicious irony_.

But it wasn't so delicious anymore. Now that he had come full circle and the only difference was that he had fallen twice now, still not able to pick himself back up a second time.

Jack did not stop to look at Pippa's grave or acknowledge her lack of presence.

If Pitch didn't know any better, he would say that Jack's return and his sister's death were nothing more than coincidence.

But Jack did look tired, the sort of tired one got from searching the world for meaning and self awareness.

The Shadow Man recognized it from his own odd reflection.

Pitch wanted desperately to know how Jack remained invisible as he blew flurries from his lips like a child might blow bubbles. When the townsfolk pulled their hoods on and tightened their scarves, all while whispering amongst each other,

"Jack Frost is playful this year."

Which is what they called him now. They had been calling him that for twenty long and boring years.

Ever since the boy who treasured the winter died, and the idea of such a boy replaced him.

As a spirit, Jack was not believed in. But in one small village, in the hearts of an aging generation, he became an expression.

Pitch knew hope for the last time in decades when Jack found the lake. His lake. The sun left beads of water on the thin ice, barely getting it's bearings for the season.

He stood on the very spot he once perished through, and looked around.

He might have been looking for something, someone, a feeling even. Pitch stayed in the trees and thought it unfair he should have to watch and want so pitifully.

Had he not always been one to leap out and take that which he desired?

He had that very first night, gripping Jack's quivering thighs in his wide hands and feeling the blood coursing through them.

But he had changed.

They both did.

And maybe, what they had become were no longer good for each other.

Pitch could not keep the choke in his throat at bay when Jack sat down and buried his face in his knees.

Of all the people that did not believe in him and the passing of the only person he ever held any responsibility over, Jack cried for a reason neither of them understood.

Pitch because his once powerful insight to the boy's mind was severed like a chord, and Jack because he simply could not remember what he was supposed to be sad about.

Now that he thought it over, Pitch knew that he and Jack were just two stray dogs to come across each other.

He diverted direction for the company, and Jack allowed it because he was a caring and hospitable pup. With so much to offer, Jack gave.

He gave Pitch every scrap he had until ultimately, he himself had starved.

Pitch never even noticed him grow thin.

A hungry dog tends to bite, and maybe that was why Jack hurt Pitch in the end...

Why Pitch had tried so hard to hurt him when it all began.

The energy about their existence shifted down the gradient until Pitch was no longer a whimpering shell of a belief... and yet left Jack unavoidably in his place.

Like stray dogs, death is inevitable.

The first goes and the other circles its corpse until the meat has melted from its bones and the smell of who the dog _was_ becomes pungent and distorted with time.

Twenty years can rot a person, take everything good about them and burn it at the edges until it falls apart.

The remaining stray waits by the dead companion, wanting it to come back. Wanting to hear it laugh or smile and trot through the snow. The shell that is left is beautiful in the beginning.

It looks to be resting.

When Jack had wiped his eyes a final time, he walked past Pitch.

But he stopped, he turned, he looked at Pitch with little more than a startled gaze.

"What do _you_ want?" Jack bit, his words seizing Pitch's shoulders.

Jack had met others like him; of course a spirit could not be left to wander without any direction whatsoever.

Jack knew a spirit when he saw one, mainly because it was the only time anyone ever looked at him and did not look past him.

Jack did not recognize the Nightmare King, not for what they had shared nor for the legends that crept after him wherever he went.

He was nothing but a stranger in the woods by the lake, the one that Jack had run from but been inexplicably drawn back to.

"No, what do _you_ want?" Pitch hissed in response.

_Why did you come back. What for? What could possibly be here for you? Nothing but the pieces of a life once shared, the only things that remind me what it means to care._

Jack jumped at the scathing response, Pitch slipping away into the darkness beneath the trees.

_Just this, give me this so that I can always remember it._

Pitch went to where he felt he belonged...

Under the rotting bed-frame that belonged once to Pippa.

When there is nothing left of the stray in its corpse, the companion wanders, looking for its dear friend and not sure where he might have gone.

With no one to watch its back, the remaining stray is barred open for all to see, exposed like a varicose vein...

Until a bullet is put between its eyes.

* * *

Pitch did just what Jack said he would.

Sulk when unable to comprehend his own emotions.

Though Pitch would prefer to call it lamenting, for it had a more woeful ring.

He sulked for a hundred short years, of which he spent every moment dreaming of the day he would rip the man from the moon and feel the collapse of his neck in his hands.

For another two hundred years... well, Pitch isn't sure where the next two hundred years went. The task of scaring and feeding and scaring and growing stronger was so repetitive that he was hardly aware of its passing at all.

Each morning, Pitch watched the sun rise by himself and imagined Jack slowly waking, the waves of sleep slipping from his body like an unwinding toy. Jack would yawn, loudly, abrasively, much like how he did everything, and he would greet Pitch with the most overused and inaccurate phrase mankind ever created.

_Good morning_.

It was never a good morning. Jack _hated_ waking up and he always mentioned it to Pitch, and the Nightmare King certainly did not care how the morning could be described.

Still, he missed it.

Pitch didn't _spy_ on Jack. The world was simply so small and it was always snowing somewhere.

Jack may have been different, but there was a distinct outline about him that was very much the same Jack that the Nightmare King knew. Over time it defined itself so crisply that Pitch wanted for nothing but to trace his finger over each edge, across each factor that became Jack Frost.

It was a revolting desire, something Pitch decided he would take to the end of time with him.

So if he built his lair under the pitiful shadow of what was once Pippa's bed, no longer real, just a projection of how he had last seen it, it was not to watch the frost spirit. Because Jack had stayed after his return; sure he traveled often but it was always to the lake where he wound up and Pitch hated him for it because he was driven down.

Underground.

He refused to share a turf with Jack, refused to even acknowledge him.

Because nobody else did.

Nobody believed in Jack, and Pitch felt a sour sense of vengeance each day the boy remained unseen.

Jack had come to know what it felt like to be cast out, forgotten, watching the world keep turning while he was locked in a time when his whole world had been full of happiness.

Happiness and snow.

Jack had ignored Pitch, turned away, _stopped believing_.

As far as Pitch was concerned, Jack got everything he deserved.

Thinking back on a time when he walked out of Jack's life, Pitch couldn't help but think that _so did he_.

Jack and Pitch both alone but neither deserving of each other, time kept the pain in Pitch's dark heart fresh, in fact, it offered nothing but endless moments to dwell on all of the things that went wrong.

If Pippa hadn't been so useless as to get herself into such a situation...

If Jack hadn't so easily reached for her...

If Pitch had been there to warn Jack that the ice grew thin...

There were so many 'if's for a being that never once cared about changing the past.

But the future was a blank sheet and Pitch was ready to fill it with fear and nightmares, fill it up until everything was darkened by shadow.

Especially Jack Frost.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Hello Everyone! Sorry this chapter took a bit longer than the others, thank you all for your support and there are only two chapters to go before it all comes to an end!**

It was incredible how drastically and yet, how little Jack had changed over the course of several hundred years.

Dashing about in the snow and surrounded by children constantly squealing with laughter, Pitch imagined he did only what came naturally, but without the limitations of man. Jack's lithe body, stunted just before adulthood, unwound like a spring let loose without any trace of gravity to adhere him to Earth.

One might say he played as recklessly as he was meant to, now that the fear of death had come and gone as a passing thought.

Pitch tried to watch Jack as infrequently as possible, but like all who loved and lost, could not keep his eyes to himself when he felt the frost spirit near.

The boy's laughter carried across the nipping wind, warming people despite the cold. It's sound an anchor, one they could neither recognize nor explain, but Pitch knew what Jack's laughter did to the soul.

He recognized it the first time he saw a child alone in the snow but never _alone_.

Pitch thought that such a sound must be carried to every mountain, filled every valley, and perhaps it was only in the trenches where it did not that people slowly froze to death.

A place without Jack Frost to guard them.

It was hateful to see such a guiding light and know it flashed not for him... but for the world.

Pitch always hated sharing, but the alternative he found to be far worse.

Jack always got to people. Even when they could not see him, he got to people.

When Pitch approached Cupcake in the first whispers of her dreams, he saw a gentle expression left in place from a day of fun at the hands of Jack Frost.

A girl whose self image and domestic criticism kept her face enraged and her heart solemn, now delighted by dreams of unicorns and friendship.

Pitch hated seeing the good ones go. The ones that project fear the loudest always left a silence behind when they resolved their emotional discrepancies.

Best not let them wander too far.

It was easy to draw her back, to fill precious Cupcake's dreams with fear and anguish.

It was so simple to remind her of her faults and how tomorrow, she would once again be judged for them.

Pitch empathized with her small whimper of pain.

Remembering one's faults was inevitable, and looking in the mirror and seeing in one's reflection the very thing that drove others away...

That was universal.

When Pitch stepped out into the starlit night, still bright with hope and joy, he glanced at the moon and its threatening loom.

"Don't look at me like that, old friend." Pitch chortled, the sound slicing through the threads of ice in the air. "You must have known this day would come."

It had been in the making since Pippa's first nightmare, the taste of poison to an addict returned after so long.

Building, his desire had become engorged and fed night by night, and as the terrors spread, it only served to feed him more.

An idea that blossomed into his sweet little Nightmare, whom Pitch called Onyx for no other reason than her deadening black tone.

The first time she came about, a conglomeration of tainted dream sand, Pitch saw in her stature the potential for revenge.

He could have an army, large enough and dark enough to block out the moon.

"My Nightmares are finally ready."

It would be a war but Pitch was prepared. Beyond prepared. With nothing left to lose, the Nightmare King knew it was victory or death, and neither without the fight of hot blooded memories egging him on.

It was time to call on his promise.

It was time to pay back a debt, a debt of such amassed pain that not even Manny could find a golden grain to reach for in the plight.

"Are your Guardians?"

Pitch didn't like it when those who recognized what he represented began to no longer believe. Not Pippa, not Cupcake, and certainly not Jack.

The Man in the Moon, unwilling to have his darling Guardian-in-training tainted by the likes of the Boogeyman, blacklisted himself in a very special place in Pitch's heart.

"Oh... this day was coming alright. And when the world falls into darkness, I want everyone to know that it was _your fault._"

* * *

He was so close now. With Jack's teeth cradled in the curve of his hand, Pitch dared to imagine what sort of world they could create.

Together.

The possibilities seemed endless, but the one common factor that kept Pitch imagining was Jack by his side again...where an empty spot lingered for far too long.

* * *

When things began, he had no intention of getting Jack involved.

If the boy wanted to pelt children with snowballs and throw them carelessly into the streets, well, Pitch couldn't care less.

He knew that Jack had great potential yet to be tapped into, knew that the moon was breaking him in for further purpose, but for now he was switched to the back burner, for Pitch had more pressing characters to concern himself with.

The Guardians had once driven him back into the shadows with his tail between his legs, but they had been at peace far too long and Pitch had risen from beneath their feet.

Perhaps, had they not kept their noses collectively turned up, they might have foreseen the inevitable as well.

Toothiana was the first to crumble in Pitch's grip.

The woman who made children eager to go to bed.

What better way to soften the heart of a _precious_ child than to bribe it with worldly offerings?

Keep giving a child toys and they will keep loving you; an incredibly crude and neanderthal system that fed Tooth and her fairies.

Even Pitch had become more evolved in time.

In the Dark Ages, there was much to be afraid of, but in a time where the streets had a lamp on every corner, Pitch had to put forth far more effort to create fear in a child-proofed world.

Between his general distaste and his deeply-rooted grudge, Pitch watched the fairies get gobbled up one by one, into the bellies of his perfect beasts. They cried out with high-pitched chirps, sounds swallowed by each bead of sand lining inside every mare.

"Maybe I want what you have. To be believed in."

The symphony around him was the score to his ascent, he basked in it, spreading his arms and letting the hatred in Toothiana's eyes be his maestro.

Saying it out loud, a declaration for all to hear, it became no longer his shameful need or desperation...

It was a weight being lifted.

It was a frenzy and his army was _hungry_. They snapped and snarled and basked in a gluttonous victory when every last fairy was swept up.

Well, _almost_ every last fairy.

"Maybe I am _tired_ of hiding under beds."

And how many he had since lingered beneath, none so fetching as his first.

"Maybe that's where you belong."

Bunnymund's accented voice was brash against Pitch's ears. A string of words he cared so little about, he was curious if this was as interesting as confrontation with the Guardians would get.

It seemed dreadfully boring and much too easy.

"Ah, go suck an egg, rabbit."

Ruining Tooth was too simple, even a child knew that taking another child's toy away would result in earning their hatred and mistrust.

Either the friend that fails to uphold a bargain or the parent that does not deliver a promised supper, it is difficult to regain the trust of a scorned brat.

Pitch might say it was as easy as taking candy from a baby... but he would save that quip for when he felled the Easter Bunny.

Pitch always knew when Jack grew near, far before he channeled himself through the chilly air.

Looking up, he noticed a bit late that among the gathered he sought to destroy, his Jack stood with a curious gaze, searching each shadow that Pitch crept across.

"Hang on..."

Anger churned inside of him, gripping at the base of his belly and twisting it as a cruel reminder that he was still weak even when it was oceanic eyes that watched him and not whiskey brown.

"Is that... Jack Frost?"

Of course it was.

Of _course_ it was.

"Since when you are all so chummy?"

Pitch always knew Manny kept an eye on the boy, waiting for the perfect time to use him.

The fact that _now_ became that time, fueled Pitch. His throat swelled with a million hateful things he wanted to tell _Jack Frost _for the past three centuries. Every dull moment alone reminded him of his former company, which left plenty of time for the Nightmare King to get creative in his insults.

"We're not."

But instead, he went for a good old-fashioned stab.

Something he thought was long overdue for Jack to experience.

"Oh good, a neutral party."

He materialized behind the boy, earning his immediate attention. It had been a long time since he met the ferocity in those eyes...

It was good to know that Jack still had it in him.

"Then I'm going to ignore you. But, you must be used to that by now."

The waver in his gaze caused for Pitch to stumble, something he quickly hid by once again fading into the darkness that seeped deeper around the lot of them.

It should be so simple.

_You don't believe in me? Well, no one believes in you either! _

Pitch's thoughts were a circus trilling about in his head.

_We are the same! We have always been the same!_

"You think them all so great and powerful, don't you?" Pitch hissed, Toothiana growing weak and slipping to the ground.

She sat in a puddle of shed feathers, Jack watching her with a concern that drove Pitch to hate her even more than he thought reasonable.

"What did you do to her?"

After so many nights wishing to hear that voice directed at him, how could Pitch be anything but struck-down by the malice that drove it? Pitch knew the night Jack Frost drifted home to his grave of a lake that the boy resented him.

It angered the Nightmare King beyond words... maybe because of all they had been through together, or maybe because a part of Pitch knew that he deserved it.

For every single torment, every cruel graze inflicted on Jack since the moment he _touched_ him. Each hateful word or snide comment collected a debt and Pitch Black paid it, too.

But the mar was there, a stain that could not be erased even by time.

Pitch used to tell Jack about the spirit world as if they were children's stories, an inexplicable scene seeing as Pitch never thought of Jack as a child. He wondered if Jack remembered those words spoken lazily on casual nights, barely overcoming the tension between them.

He imagines that not a single of the Guardians ever sat him down with such tales of their origins and existence.

"Didn't they tell you, Jack?"

Did Jack even truly understand what he was?

"Great being a Guardian... but there is a catch."

The look on Jack's face assured him that no one had taken care of the boy whatsoever.

It was ironic, so called Guardians leaving a spirit, barely out of childhood himself, alone. It broke Pitch's heart (partially in expression, partially in all literal sense) and he could not help but feel it could be easy to sway the boy, to offer him guidance and tilt him in the right direction.

Or better yet, the wrong direction.

"If enough kids stop believing, everything your friends protect..."

Pitch discarded the idea, knowing that he could not bear to have Jack close but never as close as before.

"Wonder."

He imagined that Jack might look at him with eyes that judged or begrudged him, and those were the worst eyes.

"Hopes and dreams..."

The others watched Jack, gauging his thoughts on what Pitch revealed slowly. From her spot on the floor, Toothiana almost looked ashamed.

_Good_.

"It all goes _away_."

She curled into herself, letting her small, trembling hands grip her arms tight.

Chills come first. Pitch knows firsthand. When children stop believing, their belief drains like blood from a spirit's veins. Life so easily discarded with the dismissal of a child.

"And little by little, so do they."

The realization in Jack's eyes was blatant, they darted across the spread of Guardians that stood before Pitch... he was picturing each of them flickering away, burned down to the bottom of the wick. Jack looked so devastated at the thought, threatened with a sadness that he never once spared for loosing Pitch.

No, Jack would never join Pitch; the Nightmare King could see that plainly.

"No Christmas, or Easter, or little fairies that come in the night."

Maybe when all of these awful things were finally out of sight, Pitch could forget about them.

"There will be nothing but fear and darkness... and me."

Alone. Always, _always_ alone. Pitch walked his entire life on a path wide enough for two, but narrow enough for one to feel crushed.

He spoke to them all, but his golden rod eyes stayed trained on Jack.

"It's your turn not to be believed in!"

Pitch could not say if he spoke of revenge for the last half a millennium... or for that one chilly night out on the frozen lake.

* * *

It is a mantra that he repeated to himself.

_We can be together again._

Surrounded by a mass of Nightmares, Pitch couldn't help but recognize how desperately he tried to fill the loneliness.

_I can do it right this time._

Not even a hundred mares could take the place of a lonely boy in a cabin. Pitch had finally accepted this after years of trial and failure to conjure his own form of company.

_I won't mess this up._

But it was alright by then, because Jack would remember and things would pick up right where they left off.

_I won't mess this up._

Pitch tried to imagine that where they 'left off' was in the cave, wrapped in each other, and was not Pitch being abandoned on the ice.

* * *

The next time Pitch saw Jack it was the frost spirit's turn to chase him. He tried not to let the moment satisfy him, concerned that any distractions involving Jack Frost would lead him to misconstrue his priorities.

It was supposed to be about the Sandman.

The taste of sweet dreams could easily turn sour, all it took was a little _touch_. But Pitch did not have the time or means to travel the world and spoil every child's night, one by one.

Perhaps that had been enough before, enough to keep him alive and strong, but not tonight.

Tonight he wanted the world and the only thing quicker than spoiling a dream was ensuring no good dreams came about to begin with.

In other words, Sandy had to _die_.

He was bothered by it, when the realization dawned on him, but Pitch had slowly come to accept the fact that he could not ascend without tearing others down around him.

Killing a spirit was no easy task, which is why in the end, Pitch knew he had to assimilate the dream-weaver into his own nightmare sand.

There would be no good dreams anymore. Every night would be filled with a swallowing emptiness, the perfect welcome for Pitch's mares.

The Boogeyman was pleased at the thought, that warmth replacing any doubt he had about the _moral_ of his intention.

He had stopped giving thought to _moral_ a long time ago.

So when Pitch lost one of his mares to a jolt of ice, he had been caught off guard.

His mind _had_ been on other things, and yet again Jack Frost caught his attention. Even after all the years of separation the boy still commandeered anything Pitch was up to. Maddening, the Shadow King scolded himself repeatedly for allowing it, but this time, even he had not seen it coming.

"You know, for a 'neutral party' you spend an awful lot of time with those weirdos."

It was a joke, mostly, but Jack wasn't laughing. A jab at all the time the boy had spent with the strangest of them all.

Jack used to laugh at Pitch's jokes.

Now Pitch felt that Jack only laughed at him.

"This isn't your fight, Jack."

He was giving him an out, the chance to turn around and walk away. Pitch didn't want to _hurt_ Jack, even after all the years of pain he could not so much as imagine doing such a thing. Love did not, unfortunately for him, fade with time, instead it burned steadily like a stubborn coal and forcibly reminded Pitch every so often that it was indeed there.

That moment was one of those reminders, it asked Pitch to leave Jack out of this, out of everything.

He didn't have to get involved.

But the narrowing of Jack's eyes and the manor of threat in which he raised his staff, as if to strike, spoke a great deal on the boy's character. Things that Pitch already knew about him flashed in his stance, it said _I will not back down_ and the tone of it was familiar enough to weaken Pitch's knees.

And then he said something strange.

"You made it my fight when you stole those teeth."

Not the Guardians then, not their annoying dutiful doting on the children of the world... but the teeth?

Curiosity got the best of Pitch, as he was curious by nature and even more so when it was Jack that perplexed him.

"The teeth? Why do you _care_ about the teeth."

They were nothing but memories of chil-

Oh.

_Oh._

The shock grounded Pitch so thoroughly that when Sandy appeared beside him, he physically recoiled back.

_So that's it then..._

All this time, Pitch mucked around in the dirt like a sloven animal and all because Jack _did not remember_.

He had not been corrupted by whatever the moon could have told him upon his awakening. He was not turned against Pitch (at least not until much later) and convinced that anything they had together was for moot.

Every moment the two of them had shared were buried... Somewhere in that pile of teeth that Pitch had so brazenly discarded on his floors.

* * *

When Pitch struck Sandy where his shoulder blades dipped, the darkness seeped into him like a beautiful curse, and as each grain blackened, Pitch grew stronger.

It was a wonderful feeling to have the good dreams of the world disappear, forgotten so easily the way he once had been.

But he would never be forgotten again, Pitch would embed himself so deeply in the subconscious of those around him that the lingering fear would be inescapable.

When everyone in the world knew who Pitch was, Jack Frost would have no choice but to as well.

"I'd say sweet dreams, but there aren't any left."

_They are all mine_.

When the Sandman crumbled, Pitch could not contain his stretching smile, one he imagined must look downright sinister to his gaping audience.

_Good_.

When Jack surged forward, a scream of hatred pouring from his throat, Pitch reeled slightly.

No, he didn't have time for Jack's heroic rampage, drawing forth his newly enhanced nightmare sand, Pitch sent a wave of it hurdling toward the bleary-eyed boy. Pitch hoped he would not cry for the spirit, for he did not wish to see Jack shed tears.

Partially because Jack in pain inevitably resulted in Pitch in pain, and partially because the boy had never cried for him.

Memories or no memories.

He just wanted to block him out, drive him back from the front line. But Jack persisted, he sheilded his eyes from the rain of sand and stayed firmly put.

Pitch knew the boy was stubborn, it was hard to watch him fight back to no avail.

But then something changed.

The air sparked and crackled with strings upon strings of ice that could be described as lighting bolts, digging up and through the sand.

The sound was a myriad of splitting crystals and from the eruptions came a hailstorm of all that was left of their love. A masterpiece pouring down in slivers of ice and sand the color of a dark night and as cold as the mountain tops endured together.

The force of such a sight threw Pitch to the ground with little mercy, above his head where Jack Frost began to fall as well, the last of the monument trickled away. A thousand stars in a single clutter, lighting the darkness.

It served to remind Pitch that the days they spent together were just a memory, but a memory not so distant as one might think.

And if he played his cards right, there would be endless eons to create more.

"Finally..." He chuckled darkly. "Someone who knows how to have a little fun."

And Pitch noted silently to himself, that it was nice to feel young again.

* * *

And so things came full circle; Pitch holding a gold vial of teeth in one thin-fingered hand. Behind him a globe flickered with lights that became more and more dull with each passing moment.

It was an old and worn out substitute, built on that which the Guardians left behind.

Pitch always seemed to get the leftovers.

"I have a very important task for you, Onyx." Pitch spoke warmly to his first and favorite mare. Her head bucked in recognition, her eyes promising responsibility for whatever Pitch could require.

"I need you to deal with a few things... actually, a lot of things."

He chuckled darkly as his own humor.

Her firm snort swore to Pitch that Bunnymund's precious eggs would have fleeting lives, giving example by stamping her hoofs in the dirt.

When Onyx fled from his cavern, Pitch pressed his thumb against the seal of the vial, picturing in his head the soft brown hair and softer eyes of Pippa Overland.

"He'll come for you." Pitch whispered as the memories began to leak from the crevice. "Sweet Pippa..."

"He always came for you."

And just as he predicted, with the sound of the girl's voice wafting up from underneath her very own imagined bed frame, Jack came spiraling down into the darkness.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: This chapter is very long! A lot happens here, also this is the second to last chapter! Everything will finally come to a conclusion!**

He knew Jack would come.

He knew the voice of a loved one could drag any soul to any depth.

Pitch didn't know _why_ he knew this, but the familiarity of it was unshakeable as Pippa's voice called from the darkness for Jack to come to her side.

Jack would follow the voice into the darkness, even if it meant losing his soul over it...

Pitch knew because...

Because...

Sometimes he felt like someone had once called out to him from the dark... and he could never really remember the details, but here he was, shrouded in shadows.

The Nightmare King couldn't help but wonder if Jack found his place to be familiar.

He trekked through the corridors with a cautious step, eyes searching each cracked and worn wall. It was very clear to Pitch that Jack was curious, careful, but curious. He recognized it in the way the boy held his hand up and threatened to touch his surroundings, but never without doubt.

The corridor kept on for what felt like a lifetime, which for someone like Pitch was long and arduous and full of struggle. He kept himself immersed in the shadows, never a step behind as the frost spirit purged forward.

Each careless caress across the leaking walls rattled Pitch, it echoed across his shadow that wrapped the hall and how cruel each gentle reminder was.

Even in its scarcity, the brush of fingers brought on a wave of memories that were buried under a bed long ago. When nights were warmed by the pressing of skin and a single thin but shared cover.

It was all so close now.

"Looking for something?"

Pitch cooed, gazing down as Jack tore through handfuls of containers. If there was a smug look on Pitch's face it likely had something to do with having someone else muck about in the piles after his own horrible experience searching through the lot.

Jack swung and shot ice from his staff at nothing, proving that Pitch was correct in assuming it best to lay low. It was startling, however, to learn that the boy was on-edge enough to strike first and ask questions later.

Funny after so many centuries and after all the horrible things Jack had probably seen, watching humans be _humans_, it was Pitch that still managed to wind him up like a spring.

The Boogieman could not wait to let him loose.

He laughed and drifted further, loving how Jack followed without fail.

The boy rounded a corner just as Pitch drifted across a poorly lit hall, a tease as if to say _I'm here_.

The darkness flickered.

_Come get me, Jack._

"Don't be afraid, Jack. I'm not going to hurt you."

It was a game of cat and mouse, but who was which was lost to Pitch. He felt like Jack had been batting him around since the day they met and not even losing his memories had saved the lost spirit from the emotional torment. But now Pitch drew the string and it was new and exciting but nostalgic and frightening all at once.

Pitch had always been able to foresee his life with Jack. He knew that one day the boy would die (albeit he never guessed so soon). He knew that Jack would wise up and move on eventually, but he'll be honest and admit that memory loss was not a foreseen complication.

The only thing Pitch hadn't speculated on was the possibility of _eternity_ with Jack.

Eternity.

Far longer than any affair or marriage or even empire could withstand.

"Afraid?"

Jack's tone was heavy, but then again it wasn't so different from when Pitch and Jack first met.

"I'm not afraid of you."

Pitch smiled. Of course he wasn't. He recalled fondly a time when Jack's whiskey eyes had widened in astonishment at seeing him there, under Pippa's bed...

Just where she said he would be.

"Maybe not." Pitch crooned, keeping his footwork light and precise. "But you are afraid of something."

"You think so, huh?"

Pitch stepped from the shadows, not thirty feet from where Jack stay poised, staff in the air.

Pitch stared at the offensive stick, eyes trailing it's curve and recalling how it had hooked so easily around Pippa's waist.

"I know so." The Nightmare King's voice grew solemn, washed with the memories of that dreadful time.

The fear that gripped Jack on the ice was very real, and though he spoke calmly and kept his hands from shaking, Jack could not hide the truth from Pitch.

"It's the one thing I always know."

But Pitch didn't want to... not Jack's.

"People's greatest fears." Pitch cast him an empathetic gaze. What Jack feared was painfully familiar, and a cruelty he wished he could have protected him from. "Yours is that no one will ever believe in you." The panic in Jack's eyes hurt Pitch, but the Boogeyman knew that the hurt would be over soon, that Jack would remember who he was and how wonderful he had it... and that he, Jack the nothing boy, was a hero.

Before Jack Frost.

Before the Guardians.

Even before he met Pitch Black.

Shadows poured into the chamber, devouring it, and disorientating the frost spirit. Jack spun on his heel, confused, anxious, until he slammed right into a wall.

His head throbbed as the wall became the ground and his stomach turned with it.

It was a game centuries old, and Jack Frost had forgotten how to play it. Maybe Pitch took advantage of that, chuckling darkly, maybe he pushed Jack just bit further because it was nice to see him play along.

Unlike before, when Jack was nothing but unamused with the Boogeyman's isolated sense of humor.

"And worst of all, you're afraid you'll never know _why_."

And that was the golden question, the one Jack asked himself every night while he wandered frozen streets. The one Pitch could not force himself from wondering throughout the years of being alone. The one every Guardian whispered when Jack Frost was chosen as one of them, as a protector of children.

"Why you?"

Everyone would finally have their answers.

"Why were you chosen... to be like this?"

Pitch's shadow encroached on Jack, like a disease taken root.

"Well fear not, for the answer to that..."

He seeped out from the darkness, standing before the young man he loved. After so long watching from so far, being right there, within arms reach, Pitch basked.

Oh how he _missed_ Jack.

Try as he had to pretend that such a loss had not changed who he was as a person, what he became, Pitch could no longer deny...

He held out the small, golden box. The treasure chest where locked away was what they had.

"Is right here."

Jack looked impossibly young as he eyed the offering, as if he hadn't watched generations tear each other apart and put themselves back together.

"Do you want them Jack? Your memories?"

_Our memories._

Pitch's voice was a warm blanket, it was impossible for him to pretend he did not sound fond, that his eyes weren't wide and full of _hope_ for the future.

When Pitch faded once again, Jack followed with a new-found purpose, his desire to know clouded any thoughts of judgment as he joined in Pitch's dance.

It was just the two of them. Jack didn't care about the Guardians or Easter or the precious eggs that Pitch knew were being trampled as he spoke.

For the first time in a long time, Jack was entirely focused on him.

Pitch intended to keep it that way.

Gliding through the shadows of a thousand tooth fairy cages, Jack kept on Pitch's heels, where Pitch liked him, liked being the one that was followed.

"Everything you wanted to know..."

_Darling Jack._

"In this little box."

One little box that could hold _so much_.

Their fun-house morphed, twisted, and turned. It took Jack in loops all while Pitch watched and tip-toed along. A carousal of silhouettes rounded Jack, encasing him in their march. The Frost spirit's blue eyes were stretched wide as he watched the show, his breath shallow.

_Impressed yet?_

The figures closed in, sucking the air from Jack's lungs.

_Are we having fun yet?_

"Why did you end up like this? Unseen. Unable to reach out to anyone."

Pitch stretched his own grey hand forward, so close to touching the small of Jack's back. When the boy turned, sensing their proximity closing, Pitch was nowhere to be seen.

"You want the answer so badly. You want to grab them, and fly off with them."

_I want to grab you._ _I want to be, for once, the Boogeyman that people fear, the once that steals you away forever._

"But you're afraid of what the Guardians will think."

Jack crumpled into a corner, chest racking with short breaths. Pitch could not keep from imagining the young man with slightly less innocent gasps.

"You're afraid of disappointing them."

_Inhale._

"Well let me ease your mind about one thing."

_Exhale._

"They'll never accept you. Not really."

It was the truth. No one knew Jack the way Pitch did, never could. No one could ever know so intimately.

Better _never_ know him as intimately...

"Stop it! Stop it!" Jack cried out, his voice reverberating through the walls. Almost with reluctance, Pitch scowled and withdrew.

He didn't want to _scare_ Jack.

He just wanted to _play_.

Jack used to love his puppet shows... he would again soon.

Pitch stood before him then, bare and with his hands exposed, as if held up as a sign of peace.

"After all, you're not one of them."

The staff raised and pointed at Pitch's face set his shoulders tense.

"You don't know what I am."

_You don't know what I am._

_You don't know what I am._

_You don't know what I am._

Pitch tried to stop himself from lashing out, but it was too easy... easier than admitting when something hurt and exposing himself further to the one that hurt him.

"Of course I do. You're Jack Frost."

Resentment brimmed inside him.

"You make a mess wherever you go. Why, you're doing it right now."

Pitch threw the gold vial, far more forceful than necessary, and Jack caught it seemingly out instinct alone. He looked down at it, foreign and heavy with burden he'd soon know.

When he looked up, his eyes flashed in terror.

"What did you do?"

When Pitch spoke, he could not convince himself that he did not think of how Jack hurt him when he whispered...

"More to the point Jack, what did you do?"

* * *

Pitch was often plagued by flashes from the past. One that he particularly mulled over occurred one early morning. Too early for the sun to have risen.

He had only been sharing a bed with Jack a short time, and although he never slept, the comfort of the brunette beside him imitated any satisfaction humans could get from a night of rest.

Jack woke one night, dazed and alarmed at the weight beside him. He looked over his shoulder and whispered...

"Pitch? Is that you?"

* * *

The rest should have been so _easy._

Temptation lures Jack in, beckons him close, and with the curiosity of an abandoned child, he would peek into the vial and recall at last what was lost to him.

Of course it wasn't so simple.

Jack had never been average by any standard, and to let curiosity overshadow his sense of dignity... once was enough, twice out of the question.

Pitch knew it had been a good decision to follow Jack. Part of him wanted to be there when he remembered, to see the dawning on his face and most of all, to see what it looked like for Jack to miss him. He would step out then, arms spread, whisper _I'm here_ and everything would right itself.

It took every ounce of willpower not to pounce the boy as his arm drew back, ready to launch their love into the raging arctic sea.

But Jack couldn't. He knew Jack couldn't do it. There was too much to ask, too much to know. Pitch himself knew what it meant to have no roots, no trace of where or what he might have been before becoming the shadow under every bed.

The only real difference was that Pitch never desired the truth, ran from it at full pace and never looked back. It was as if some greater force whispered to him, pleaded with him to go forward and forward alone. Pitch should have listened to that voice; should have never let the past sweep him up.

But it was _Jack_.

"I thought this might happen."

When Jack swept around, his eyes were wild, fist clenched tightly around his precious teeth.

"They never really believed in you."

Pitch's voice simmered to a whimper.

"I was just trying to show you that."

And they didn't, couldn't believe in Jack the way he did. They never knew the boy in the old wood who held his sister close and stayed up every night in case she cried. The one who walked around with tired eyes, still brimming contentedly as he watched Pippa play.

A boy who gathered wood every afternoon alone in the snow, who sent his family away and _stayed behind_ to confront the embodiment of fear...

Alone...

Vulnerable...

But never scared. Even when Pitch had become nothing but a filthy molester in the night, Jack never faltered, he never lost hope.

"But _I_ understand."

How in the face of danger, Jack saw something in Pitch, something he'd never seen in himself.

He reached out, and he _played_ with him, and no one had played with Pitch in so long.

It must have been a while, because he could not remember it.

As Jack shot forth a surge of ice, Pitch missed how their games used to go on, a tangle of limbs and snow until they fell into bed or against a wall and did not come undone again until they were both _undone._

The nightmare sand protected Pitch, he had been hiding behind nightmares for a very long time.

"You don't understand anything!"

Jack lashed out, time and again. Each shot backed by enough fury to set Pitch aflame.

"No!? I don't know what it's like to be cast out?"

Pitch struck back because he always did.

The ice and sand collided and the sound of shattered bells echoed in their ears and across the endless snow.

When the air cleared, Pitch stood before Jack with resignation, pain, longing, and _love_ twisting his expression.

Even Jack, enraged and confused, could not keep his weapon raised at the sight.

"To not be believed in. To long for a family."

Jack was overwhelmed with familiarity, Pitch could see it in his gaze. He knew what Pitch longed for, he always had, but he just didn't know _why_.

The compassion that took root warmed Pitch, he had missed it so much, more than he could bare, and now Jack offered it again, and offered it without even knowing of their bond.

And finally, Pitch confessed. He should have confessed before, when Jack was still alive, but it was better late than never.

"All those years in the shadows I thought, no one else knows what this feels like."

_Pain_.

_So much Pain_.

"But..."

A soft exhale.

"Now I see I was wrong."

Their eyes locked, and Pitch saw warmth flood in Jack's icy blues. The electricity between them crackled and Pitch thought for a moment that even without his memories, Jack might be able to learn to care for him once again.

Maybe even to love him.

"We don't have to be alone, Jack."

_The truth is..._

"I believe in you."

He could almost hear Jack's heart slamming in his chest.

"And I know children will too."

They always did in those days, followed after Jack as Pitch had.

If they hadn't entrusted so much admiration in him, the name Jack Frost would have been forgotten long ago.

"In me?"

"Yes!"

Pitch turned and swept his arms out, and as if hidden until that moment, a monumental pillar of ice and sand towered, beautiful and strong...

A symbol that could endure any hardship.

"Look at what we can do! What goes together better than cold and dark?"

Their splintered reflections stare back at Jack, teasing him.

Pitch thinks Jack almost looks more beautiful torn apart by them.

"We can make them believe. We'll give them a world where everything, _everything_ is..."

When Jack turned to face him again, that amused expression was back, after so many years, as if Jack had already forgotten how much stood between them.

"Pitch Black?"

"_Pitch Black? Really?"_

That tone, those words, the advantage Jack had over Pitch was unfair.

"And Jack Frost, too."

The boy's mirth began to slip away.

_Come back_.

"They'll believe in both of us."

_Pitch_ believed in them together, and so by that standard, so should the entire world.

None would have imagined it... Not the children that no longer slept soundly nor the Guardians who spent so much time undermining what he had to offer...

And certainly not the Man in the Moon.

But Pitch would _make_ them believe.

"No."

_What?_

"They'll fear both of us. And that's not what I want."

Then Jack turned away, granting Pitch nothing but the sight of him leaving one too may times.

"Now for the last time, leave me alone."

Pitch tried to remind himself of the teeth, surely when Jack confided in them he would come crawling back.

But they were still just stray dogs roaming a street, and the world had changed all around them but they stayed the same.

And fighting for a scrap of meat, Pitch brought out what he had intended to use only as a welcoming gift.

"Very well. You want to be left alone? Done. But first..."

The twitter was soft but echoed over the hills of ice, and Pitch swore he had never seen Jack freeze so suddenly.

Which said a lot for the frost spirit.

"Baby Tooth!"

When Pitch's grip grew tighter, he had a different doe-eyed young girl in mind.

One he had far more reason to hate than the worthless bird he held, one of a million others.

"The staff, Jack."

The loathing in Jack's gaze should have hurt him, but Pitch was tired of getting hurt.

"You have a bad habit of interfering. Now hand it over."

_Rage_.

"And I'll let her go."

His fist began to deprive her of air, the little fairy fighting for what it was worth, her twitters becoming faint.

Pitch always knew how to get to Jack... He drew Jack into his den and now he forced his hand in surrender.

And it was all so _simple._

In fact, Pitch ventured to believe that if Jack hadn't been so loving, he would not fall victim so effortlessly.

Compassion was Jack's greatest fault... It was, after all, what made the Boogeyman love him.

And love from a Boogeyman could end in nothing but tears.

When Jack relinquished the staff, the feeling of power the Nightmare King felt was addictive. He twirled it and recalled again how that staff had brought Jack and Pippa together, how it had been the reason they traded places on the thin ice.

"Alright, now let her go."

But she wasn't Baby Tooth anymore, not to Pitch. She was Pippa and she was all that Jack saw. All he has ever seen.

Never Pitch.

And Jack had died because of the wretched girl in his hand, died and left him.

It was all her fault.

"No."

Pippa was dead... so why was she still tormenting him? Still getting in his way? How many _times_ did she have to die before Pitch was free of her burden?

"You said you wanted to be alone."

The pile of feathers in his grip stared with eyes so familiar, they were the spitting image of _that girl_.

"So be alone!"

When Baby Tooth got a stab at Pitch's hand, he shrieked madly, throwing her with an unimaginable force. He wanted her away from him, her and her wallowing and familiar eyes.

"No!"

The staff went next... It too was at fault.

The sound of it splitting was music and the sight of Jack clutching at his chest, as if a part of him had been crushed, could not even begin to satisfy the vengeance renewed in Pitch's blood.

Pippa was gone.

The damn staff was gone.

Pitch slammed his nightmare sand into Jack, sending the fractured boy slamming into a wall of ice, from which he slipped down...

_Down..._

_Down..._

Manny was next. Him and every one of his precious Guardians.

Every child Jack had ever watched over.

_Everyone_.

He left Jack alone in the dark with his teeth.

Part of him wanted Jack to remember now more than ever... if for no other reason than to realize what he had done, so that maybe, just maybe...

He would regret it.

* * *

Pitch might have been a guardian a long time ago, in a time he had long forgotten.

There was a lot he didn't know about himself, and he never dared to question it before. But as the Boogeyman, it should not have hurt so much as it did to see Jack shrug him off, _outgrow_ him.

When Jack stood beside Jamie Bennet, a boy who actually believed in him for no other reason than faith, Pitch began to suspect that Jack searched to fill the void his sister left behind.

Pitch was never far from the last believer, and although it angered him that Jack had returned, staff in hand, ready to stand against him, he could not fight down the pride he felt.

_He sees me_.

Hadn't he once thought those exact words? When one night, a knight of a brother looked under a bed, if only to assure his ward that no monsters crept in the dark.

It was old-fashioned, but so was Pitch, and he had been so blinded by scorn that he let Jack suffer alone when he could have _been there for him_.

Could have become friends once more, more than that.

He'd done it once so why not again?

Neither of them had really changed, just transformed into something unrecognizable to the eye alone.

Shouldn't Pitch have tried?

But Jack had looked into his past. _Had to have_ to have such resolve as he stood before Pitch.

Stood and opposed him.

There was no room for the Nightmare King to regret his decisions, because even though Jack had no excuse not to remember...

He still didn't care about Pitch.

Pitch didn't know that Jack had done nothing but graze the surface, had asked _why was I chosen?_ And not _What have I lost?_

If Pitch knew, he would blame the Man in the Moon.

Somehow, such twisted answers had to be his fault.

Pitch would have known without asking that once again, Manny tore them apart, waved them around, and pinned them against each other.

So Pitch fought on, under the impression that Jack knew every secret shared in a far-off cave, but did not care.

And Jack fought back, because he never could stand down.

* * *

"It's over Pitch! There's no place to hide."

_No._

_No._

_No._

How had things gone so _sour_?

Just like everything else.

Pitch's lips twisted into a wry smile before he sunk down, descending into the darkness. Around the circle of Guardians, a parade of silhouettes began to march, the sound of laughter in the air.

The laughter of a man with nothing left to lose.

When the carousal began again, the tone had changed. Any lick of playfulness disappeared long ago and all that remained was a malice that boiled under Pitch's skin. His shadows circled Jack, macabre, and the frost spirit watched them with pitiful caution. While he followed the dance, Pitch rose up from where he never left, behind Jack, in his shadow, where he always was.

Even without Jack knowing, he had always been there. So many years, wasted, useless, disappearing into the breeze.

_Where did they go?_

Hatred. Burning, insidious, it possessed Pitch and with his hands, lifted his scythe of nightmare sand.

Arms raised high above him, the Nightmare King eyed the back of the boy's head, familiar and different at the same time. His eyes blazed at the dip of his shoulders, the sound of his laugh bouncing about the air... as if he hadn't just torn away the last thing Pitch ever had.

He saw Jack and in Jack, he saw the Man in the Moon, who started all of this in the first place.

In a single instant, not even a microsecond, Pitch came to the decision that if Jack was so precious to the Moon, then maybe it was about time that Manny knew what it felt like to lose him.

It was the single instant that Pitch Black became irrefutably insane.

_Jack does not love me._

_Jack has never loved me._

The hatred feeding Pitch's swing could split Jack's skull with ease, spread it open like a flower bursting in a fleeting bloom before it shriveled into death.

_I'll kill him_.

"Jack! Look out!"

It wasn't _fair_. The young spirit turned as the hurdling boomerang knocked Pitch's scythe off course, upon raising it again he could see every spark of fear in Jack's eyes, washed out by the darkness enough to seem almost as whiskey-brown as they once were. Rippling under Pitch's skin was a fear so distant and yet so familiar, if only because he had memorized it that horrible day on the ice.

Jack watched him and Pitch recalled that morning once more.

When Jack had looked at him with eyes exhausted from a troubled sleep and a voice shrouded in a mix between hope and doubt.

_Pitch? Is that you?_

As the blade began to descend, Pitch tried to fight it.

_No._

He wanted to pull back, but his arms disobeyed.

He was going to kill Jack, the Jack that looked at him and asked

_Is_

_that_

_you_

?

And it wasn't. Pitch hadn't been himself in a very long time. He was a worn-out shell of a remnant of some horrible wrong-doing. He had been scorned twice and abandoned by everyone and everything he thought to treasure.

What emerged was not the person that Jack Overland (And now, and forever, Jack Frost) fell in love with. The person that was never even a person. Who was not a Guardian or a bringer of joy.

Jack fell in love with the loneliness that went bump in the night.

_Jack. _

_I still love you. _

_Jack. _

_Don't die. _

_Jack._

When his blade stopped, Pitch thought for sure he had done it, and for an instant, Pitch wondered if it was possible for a spirit to stop existing for no other reason than losing the will to.

Because really... if Pitch learned anything in the past three hundred years, it was that life meant nothing without Jack.

But by some miracle, some _wonderful, glorious, miracle_, he was saved.

Someone had saved Jack from him.

When Pitch was ripped back and away from the horrible scene he had created, it dawned on him.

_Jack has such wonderful friends to protect him. _

_Jack taught even the Guardians how to love._

_Of course he would._

_He's Jack Frost._

_But more than that..._

_He's Jack._

When Pitch hit the ground, the force of it ricocheting through his bones could not compare with the heart break of the realization that Jack was gone forever.

* * *

Pitch, as the Boogeyman, does not sleep, and when anything resembling sleep does befall him, he certainly never dreams.

But this time, he dreamed of butterflies.

Somebody he knew _loved_ butterflies. Loved to stomp after them in the early spring. Somebody who would peel open their chrysalis too soon to see the beautiful creature nestled inside before it was ready to be seen.

Pitch recalled a stern scolding, a small trembling tear as he whispered, _no... it's not ready yet_.

The Nightmare King did not know who it was that loved butterflies or the spring or the sound of running water... but his own advice struck him deeply.

_It's not_ _ready yet._

In his lucid and unfamiliar dream-state, Pitch saw Jack, curled up in a cocoon that he had unknowingly ripped open, exposing pink and incomplete flesh.

Finding Jack at his most vulnerable, in the climax of his life-long identity crisis, Pitch pried the poor spirit open much too soon.

* * *

When all was said and done, Pitch found himself in Antarctica again. The cold rattled his old bones but the numbing effect turned out to be everything he needed.

Especially after Jack had watched so smugly as the Nightmares dragged him away. After everything they had been through on that very same frozen lake, beneath the ice where Pitch surrendered his pride and _begged_ the moon to bring Jack back.

And he was afraid now, he was afraid that even after everything that happened, his emotions would still be a slave to Jack.

Jack who remembered him.

Jack who didn't care.

Jack whom he loved.

Everything came apart at the seams, even Pippa's old bed frame collapsed in the chaos.

It was just him, alone, running from his own creations.

Pitch thought he may have even been lost forever if Onyx hadn't proved her loyalty as she always had. Standing up tall and snarling at the hoards that attacked.

He didn't know what happened to her, amidst the bedlam she had been left behind, where she fought for him tooth and hoof.

For all he knew, she was gone.

Slipping down the gaping trench, Pitch found himself to be the definition of alone.

With even his Mare taken from him, Pitch looked up at the moon that could barely be seen in sky that was creeping.

"You win."

He whispered.

"You finally win."

Pitch's foot met something hard and of a strange shape, looking down at it, his expression twisted.

"You always did love to gloat." He murmured, picking up the vial of Jack's teeth. It was as pristine as the day he found it, and the rendition of Jack's soft pink face and overly-brown eyes stared back at him. "A sore winner, you are."

When he plucked the vial from the snow, it was cold and forgotten.

He could imagine that Jack had simply forgotten it in all of his excitement.

He held the metal close to his chest and let himself sink to his knees, trying to warm them.

They are all that he had left of the Jack that might have loved him.


	9. Chapter 9

"Tell me the truth."

On the floor beneath a thunderstorm of feathers, through which the sun cast its light, Toothiana sat with her ankles crossed beneath her.

"Are you _okay_?"

Across to where she stared, with his shoulders sunken, was Jack.

The two made an aesthetically pleasing match in the vibrant light, one an Icelandic blue and the other a myriad of fresh spring. Tooth outstretched her hand, palm upturned and patient, an gesture of peace, security, or anything Jack could possibly need.

He never took it, kept his eyes on the pattern of gold painting the floor, in constant movement as the fairies around them celebrated in their own peculiar way.

The hand waited, welcoming, offering, and Jack wanted to take it.

He wanted to take it and smile and cheer because of all they had done and been through and accomplished together. A bond had been formed irrevocably between the Guardians, and although they began to go their separate ways, the frost spirit could not help but linger behind; until all who remained was Toothiana, with her sweet eyes and boundless confidence in him.

"I guess I'm fine." He murmured back, still eying where she reached. Tooth looked down at it as well, suspended and alone. Smiling slightly, she let it drop, cold.

"Something still seems to be bothering you, Jack." She did not wait for invitation as she leaned forward, resting her hands on each shoulder. "You know that I will listen to whatever you have to say."

The boy looked up and could not fight the infection of her smile.

"There are those teeth that I love so much." She teased, bushing a knuckle across a faint dimple in his cheek.

Chuckling, Jack reached his own hand up to wrap around hers, slowly, he descended it, until her vibrant smile had been replaced by a curious furrow.

"I just feel like after everything that has been happening, I'm still wandering around, confused, alone-"

"You aren't alone anymore, Jack." Tooth cut in. "You have us, the Guardians, and Jamie. Jamie will never stop believing in you."

"But shouldn't there be more to it than that?"

Jack's eyes were wide and begging, asking questions that Tooth did not know the answers to.

"Look at yourself." He gestured to her. "And look at all the fairies that keep you company. I imagine it'd be impossible to get lonely... even with Baby Tooth I felt just a bit more..."

He trailed off, eyes glazed over.

Tooth touched his face again, slowly, as if not to startle him.

"More... what, Jack?"

The crystal walls wrapped around them like fences, a giant bird cage for any to look in and nothing to get out.

Jack felt trapped.

"More... I don't know."

Where they sat was a bed warmed by the constant rays, it was suffocating.

Melting.

"Loved or something."

"Oh Jack..."

"No. No. No."

Jack stood effortlessly, marching to find a patch of shadow where the sun did not blaze.

It almost seemed as if there weren't any shadows left.

"Stop it, Tooth. I don't need you to _reassure_ me or... or anything like that."

The only shadow in the room was pitiful, a single stripe that had nothing to offer anyone, let alone Jack.

Where did all the shadows go?

"I'm fine. Really."

He smiled.

"Promise."

* * *

Jack spent an immense amount of time with the Tooth Fairy since the downfall of Pitch Black.

She didn't really understand better than anyone else, but her door was always open to the young spirit and unlike North or Bunnymund, she did not mind leaving Jack alone in her home while she worked.

Sometimes she would even stay to chat with him, never longer than a few minutes but with how quickly the woman spoke it was surprising how much she could say in such a short amount of time.

When she left, Jack would play with the fairies, particularly Baby Tooth. She never forgot all that Jack had done for her, and Jack missed having her gentle twitters in his ear.

"She really likes you, Jack." Tooth said one evening, the sun casting an orange glow around them. "She misses you when you aren't here."

"Well, you know me. Can't stay in one place too long. Mayhem to cause, snowballs to throw at unsuspecting children."

Tooth laughed, covering her mouth with a small hand.

"That is so horrible Jack!" She teased. "A little harsh to incite fun don't you think?"

_An explosion of snow against a blurry face. _

_Dark._

_Jack's laughter twisted into a squeal as the form began to chase, all while the snow drifted around them in lazy sheets._

"_You'll pay for that, Jack."_

Jack gasped, clutching at his chest as the memory swamped him.

"Jack?"

"I... I don't know why. It's just... I just do it." He murmured, blinking and trying to focus on the flashback. It was all a mess, nothing but streaks of black and white and a melodious voice twisting about in his ears.

"Oh." Tooth smiled. "I was thinking it might be because of something from when you were still human."

"It... It might be. I'm not sure."

The spirit's smile wavered, the slightest bit.

"Don't you remember? I thought you got your memories back."

Jack stared down at his hands.

"Well... not all of them."

"Why not?"

Now Toothiana turned all of her attention on him, the boy backing up under the scrutiny.

"It was like peeking in on someone's life. Someone different." Fingers wrapped around his staff, twisting it. "Someone I can't be anymore. There are a lot of things I left behind, a lot of feelings."

He hated the way she looked at him with eyes of pity.

"It's terrifying you know? I saw why I became a Guardian. I know what I did."

"Jack, you can't just watch the past like a movie. It's your feelings and thoughts that you have to draw from when you need answers."

The fairies in the air settled, all watching in quiet expression.

"You should go, find out not just who you were, but what made you _you_."

Jack's eyebrows drew together, a pained expression twisting his lips.

"What if I don't like it."

_A warm chuckle when the night was darkest, emanating from beside him._

_It made him feel safe. _

"What if it hurts?"

_A soft form warming his blanket, fitting perfectly where Jack pressed against it._

"Friends. Family. My sister. If you had seen how much he adored her..."

"You, Jack."

Tooth cupped his chin, forcing his eyes up to meet hers.

"How much you adored her."

Unable to keep her gaze, the boy brought his hands up to cover them.

He was a child and Tooth was not fit to play the role of mother.

But she tried.

"Everything I ever had is gone."

He heard a familiar twitter in his ear and knew Baby Tooth had come to console him, her soft weight pressed into his shoulder.

Drawing back from his hands, he turned to look at her with red, swollen eyes. Her's were the same as his sister's, large and brown.

They were the same as Jamie's, brimming with admiration and faith.

They were the same as -

_Gold. Gold. Gold._

_Beautiful and terrifying and -_

Full of love.

"Jack." Tooth's tender fingers trembled. "It is through pain and loss that we define ourselves. Even if we lose something..." Her hand trailed down to press against his chest. "We gain something else inside of us."

Baby Tooth nuzzled her beak into his hair.

"Something that helps us to carry on."

And what he would give to be able to, with the truth of his loss lurking in the dark corners of his mind, Jack had been running ever since Antarctica and he wanted nothing other than to stop.

To, for once, turn around and face himself. Face the boy with the rich chocolate hair and eyes a smoked whiskey.

What would he say to him?

_I'm sorry you died. That sucks._

_Your sister probably missed you, like, a lot. _

Then what?

_I'm sorry if I don't live up to whatever standard you had for yourself._

Because honestly, could Jack impress his human self? Would he be proud of what he became?

And most importantly, upon remembering, would Jack Frost still be _Jack Frost_?

Would the him that he had been for three hundred years be a meaningless gap, something to be brushed aside and forgotten?

Every decision he ever made... Would it all be disregarded? Dismissed as delusional by the Jack Frost who was also the human Jack?

He was terrified.

* * *

When Jack soared away from the frozen arctic, in his haste the teeth had stayed behind.

It was easy for Jack to find where he and Pitch had their confrontation. After all, their monument still stood tall, reaching up into the sky with desperation.

Jack stood before it and thought it to be beautiful.

He had thought so on that day too, confronted by the Boogeyman and the rage between them.

He blew gently from his lips, casting the piles of snow that clung to it aside.

It shone brighter than the day it was born.

"How could something born of such anger be so beautiful?" Jack asked the wind, his hand pressed gently into it's underbelly.

_Sometimes you can't see how beautiful something is behind the veil you give it. _

He turned and behind him he saw...

Himself.

Himself with dark hair and darker eyes, bare feet buried in the snow with curled up toes.

As if they were cold.

The human Jack smiled and began to flee.

"Wait!"

Jack called after, stumbling about. All grace drained from him as he chased the echo from the past to where it faded...

At the edge of the trench.

Looking down, Jack could not see the bottom. It was as if the crack in the Earth had drunk every shadow into it, and even though the sun reflected off the plains of snow, no light touched the pit.

"You brought me here." Jack whispered, looking for the ghost of who he was. "Why did you bring me here?"

Again, Jack found his counterpart behind him, eyes twinkling and teeth bared in a smile he hadn't known for a very long time.

His hands rose, slowly, shaking. Jack Frost watched them reach out.

Unlike with Tooth, he reached back...

Only to have those hands shove against his chest, tipping him back.

As Jack sank into the darkness, his eyes stayed trained where Jack Overland stood.

But he was already gone.

* * *

Pitch had lost track of how long he had been in the darkness.

Each hour crept by like a plague of centuries while moments seemed to crumble beneath his touch. He could have been there, curled up and rotting, his entire life.

Longer than life. Longer than people or Jack Frost or any measurable duration of time.

He'd been drinking the memories like a balm. Living through each word spoken, witnessing a kaleidoscope of past occurrences that began to merge together until they could not longer be picked apart.

The darkness soaked them up like a filmstrip, Pitch's own private screening where he could watch Jack roam around in his worn poncho in an endless loop.

It was a circus of his own creation, all lit up from the little box in his lap.

Pitch mostly just watched, but sometimes when the echoes really got to him, he'd smile and reach out and brush his fingers through the wisps.

They'd always fall apart.

It could have been years, but only three months had passed since he first dove into the void. Of which he spent everyday filing through Jack's life, memorizing every birthday or lonely afternoon from far before they ever met.

Pitch Black literally knew more about Jack than the Frost Spirit could ever fathom, so when the memories _changed_, it was impossible not to notice.

"Jack?" Pitch called out, watching the brunette wisp veer from his usual path of toeing through the snow, cold but determined and painfully barefoot.

Pitch should have been there, threatening to leave him behind.

That's how the scene _went_.

Instead, Jack scampered off, passing through the ragged wall.

Pitch stared at where he disappeared.

"So now even you leave me."

Pitch curled his nose in anger and threw the vial, shattering it open and sending twenty pearly baby teeth ricocheting across the walls only to land in the silent snow.

Eyes locked on the now empty vial, Pitch clenched his hands and dove forward, tearing through the snow.

It was so dark he couldn't see anything.

The teeth began to pile in his hands, where he counted each one every time another was added, to be sure he wouldn't miss a single piece.

He worked silently and slowly, lifting each close and rolling them between his thumb and forefinger.

He had nineteen bundled together when he heard it, the groan that was unmistakably sentient.

"That... hurt..."

Pitch's eyes blew wide as the soft but aged voice registered.

He was soon lost as a flurry of snow swept up around him, twisting and turning until the darkness began to fade, cast away to leave nothing but soft grey trench walls and, for the first time in three months, sunlight pouring in.

It amazed Pitch how large the cavern had seemed in the dark, but to be fair, everything looked better in the dark.

Even more surprising was Jack Frost, now standing with his hand firmly gripping his staff, poised to strike.

"You!"

He hadn't even bothered with his name.

"Why are you here? Weren't you sealed away?"

The Nightmare King tried to keep his head about him, to shrug his shoulders and pretend he hadn't been piteously shut away watching reruns of Jack's life for who knew how long.

He played the part well, well enough for Jack to stay on guard, as if he actually believed Pitch to be a threat. If Pitch could not defeat him at his strongest and most enraged moment, Jack had nothing to fear in his desolate and withered state.

"You mean, wasn't I devoured by Nightmares?" He crept closer, sending Jack a step back.

Good to know he still had it.

"I'll tell you a secret, Jack, the darkness can't devour you twice."

But pain, it seemed, had no limit, nor expiration date.

"What a shame."

Jack bit back, a cornered dog willing to snap.

"And you're here because? I figured at the very least you'd go hide under that old rotten bed of yours."

Pitch spat hatred from his eyes.

"Don't talk about her bed that way, Jack."

The frost spirit faltered in his stance, just enough for Pitch to lash out and send his staff careening away. It made no sound when it hit the snow, far behind either of them.

"How _dare_ you, do you really care so little about it, about her?"

Pitch stormed away, leaving Jack defenseless and confused as to why his neck hadn't been snapped yet. The attack had been so sudden, he had been disarmed in a matter of seconds, yet the Boogeyman drew back.

"Me... I can understand. But not her."

When Pitch turned around, his lip was set in a firm and dangerous line.

"Who are you, Jack Frost."

It didn't sound like a question.

"How can you live with what you've become?"

Jack stepped forward, surging into Pitch's space rather quickly.

"And what would that be?"

"_Cold_."

Jack struck out, his hands shoving into Pitch's chest to knock him back.

It was a child's fight, but then again the two had always just been children fighting, making up, then growing up and growing apart.

As Pitch was thrown off balance, he cast out his hand, palm opening, and nineteen pretty little teeth clattered on exposed rock.

Jack could only look down at them.

Without so much as sparing him another glance, the Nightmare King was on his knees, gathering up the teeth again, hands shaking, knowing they were being watched.

"Those are my teeth."

_Silence_.

"Give them back to me."

Jack murmured, unsure of what else he could say. Never had he imagined Pitch crawling across the floor like an animal for something so worthless to him as Jack's teeth.

Never knew he'd do it more than once. More than twice. Pitch just couldn't keep tabs on those damn teeth.

It wasn't until Pitch had the lot of them in his hand that Jack stepped closer, reaching out as if to _take_.

But Pitch had enough of people taking things from him.

"No! They're mine!" He yelled, scrambling back into a corner. With no more shadows, it did nothing to hide him; he sat exposed like a ripe wound, hopeless for infection.

Jack could not keep from thinking the image seemed familiar, the Boogeyman a weak and simpering shell of everything Jack knew, it was frightening.

Which said a lot, as Jack did not find himself often scared.

"Why can't you give me this?"

Pitch asked, counting the teeth in his palm.

Nineteen perfect little pieces.

"It's all we have left together. I think it should be mine."

Pitch's tone was beyond defeated, drained, there was so little left of who he was that it began to sound foreign even in his own ears.

The boy took a step forward, slow, approaching a wounded and very wild animal.

"We don't have anything together, Pitch." He spoke calmly, hands raised. Jack figured if he needed to, he could reach his staff rather quickly, but a part of him knew that there would be no need for such things.

He didn't need it because his words were knives, striking the man where he fell.

"Antarctica... that _thing_..."

_Beautiful, looming, reaching up to the sky desperately._

"That's nothing."

"No!"

Pitch cried out, lurching forward and taking Jack in his grip, knuckles white as they clutched his jacket.

"_You_ were nothing! A nothing boy in a nowhere place!"

His grasp softened, until it was nothing but a hand resting in its place, Jack Frost standing very still with a breath still caught in his lungs.

"And once again... I am a dethroned king."

Trembling, Pitch smoothed out the creased in the deceivingly soft fabric, admiring every stitch and tendril of ice decorating it.

He only stopped when Jack grabbed his wrist.

"Explain."

He insisted.

"You already know though, and none of it was important to you... was it, Jack?"

Eyes flaring, Pitch ripped his arm free and turned, burying himself again in the corner, no longer having to look at him.

"Not enough."

The trench echoed with screams of absolute silence. They pounded on the walls and tore their throats apart, longing to be heard. The air brushed Jack's ears and flushed his face a red that might almost fool others into believing he was still alive.

He thought about attacking, ripping the teeth from where Pitch kept them cradled between him and the wall.

It all seemed so pointless then. Jack looked at a world he did not understand, one that kept on turning and left him behind.

Just like everyone did.

One by one, the Guardians returned to their normal lives.

Summer came and the snow tucked itself away for the season and Jamie went to the beach. Everyone did in fact, where they played and buried themselves in sand and did not for even a moment, miss the snow.

Jack just couldn't keep up anymore.

Not with the Guardians, not with his little group of believers, and certainly not with the Man in the Moon.

He turned to leave, ready to set fire to and burn down whatever came before him.

It was just Jack Frost now, alone.

A single, solitary, Guardian...

And if Pitch wanted lose himself over a pile of teeth then that was fine by him, in fact, he was grateful for it.

If Jack was just going to end up the way the Boogeyman did, a withered mess lost in the dark, he'd rather take the other option.

Any other option.

_Prick._

He looked down, slowly drawing his foot back.

The sharp sensation he'd felt stared back at him, dull in the glittering snow that cushioned it.

Reaching down, Jack plucked a single tooth, separated from its counterparts, and he held it up.

Against the light it seemed swallowed, the ring of sun bursting from behind it, bright.

It only seemed to get brighter, until the light consumed everything...

And finally, Jack could _see_.

Tears bubbled in his eyes, they were the tears of a man waking from an impossible sleep. The waking of a creature caged away, three hundred long years for the joints to stiffen, bed sores to spread, dreams to run _rampant_.

The breath he took in his lungs knocked him over, doubled down he tore at his chest with searching hands, a part of himself still convinced that water flooded those lungs.

_This is me?_

He'd never cared how blue the soft skin beneath his fingernails looked, probably because he'd never noticed.

But now he did. He noticed everything.

The shimmer of white as his hair swept across his eyes, the _warmth_ of the snow as he curled his toes around it, and upon turning...

He noticed Pitch Black.

The tooth fell, forgotten, as he lunged toward that broad and beaten back, stilling just before his fingers touched where the old spirit's shoulder-blades dipped.

"Pitch?"

He whispered, the word carried off by the snow.

Settling his hands softly down from where they hovered, Pitch cast a look over his shoulder with eyes that were the most brilliant gold, a color Jack couldn't believe yet loved to dream of.

"What is it now?"

The frost spirit, awoken finally from his castle bound in thorns, buried his face into Pitch's back, loving each ripple through he felt as the Nightmare King's body grew tense.

Pitch could feel Jack's lips as they moved against him, damp, whispering.

"I knew you'd come back."

Pitch somehow caught him before the poor boy's knees gave way, a wave of regret and love pulling him under, so fresh he felt it rattle his ability to remain vertical.

Everything frozen so many winters ago, thawed, upturned and surfaced for sweet, wonderful air.

Pitch's arms around him were as warm as he remembered, as solid and promising. Resting in his grip, Jack knew he'd never fall.

"Jack." Pitch whispered against his forehead, each sharp breath tickling his skin. "What... I don't..."

"I remember."

"What?"

"I didn't remember, but now I _do_."

Jack grabbed his face and he still couldn't believe how blue his skin looked beneath his nails but he didn't care.

"Don't you see, Pitch?"

And Pitch did, because he recognized every flicker in the boy's eyes, an ocean of blue that hid a flame of whiskey... buried, but not gone.

Never gone.

Pitch held him and in his arms, Jack withered because he knew it was going to be difficult.

To overcome all that had occurred between them, between Pitch and the world... there was so little place for forgiveness but that which did exist, existed in Jack and in the way he clung to his Nightmare King.

"I can't believe it."

Pitch drew back enough to lock gazes with the boy as he spoke.

"I'm gone for three measly centuries and you tried to take over the _world_."

And he laughed and Pitch loved the sound, closed his eyes and sank in it, let it wrap him up.

"Given the circumstances, I do believe I was justified."

The hands softly cupping his chin forced his eyes open, so happy he did when he saw the smile that stretched just for him.

"Pitch Black..."

His lips pressed a sweet kiss to Jack's fingers.

"What on earth am I going to do with you?"

A finger slipped into his mouth, where Pitch nuzzled it with his tongue affectionately.

When he spoke, he spoke around the digit.

"I hope that you will keep me."

And how could Jack not kiss the lips that said such sweet words? Stealing back his fingers he took their place with his mouth and cherished Pitch's lips against his own.

They would manage.

Somehow, Jack knew that between the two of them lay enough strength to stand tall through a hailstorm, which, Jack had a feeling, would be exactly what was coming for them.

He wouldn't let it tear them down.

"I'm sick of things coming between us."

Pitch swept forward to reclaim their kiss, defeated only by Jack covering his lips with a teasing hand.

"You included."

He tried to ignore the sweet prickles of tongue against his palm, knew he could not help but cherish the adoration filling Pitch's eyes.

"From now on, I'm calling the shots in this... _this._"

Neither noticed the snow that began to flutter around them, it was nothing but a background image they'd ceased to care about.

After all, they'd already spent so much time fretting over such things as the cold, and if everything they ever had was wrapped in frozen winter...

Well, then Jack had nothing bad to say of the _cold_ and the _dark_.

"You love me." Jack's voice grew soft, Pitch's playful tongue stilling. "And I know I never said it, but I love you."

His hand fell away, revealing a look of disbelief so strong across the Boogeyman's expression that Jack was ready to slap it right off.

Instead he repeated, for Pitch's sake more so than his,

"So if you love me, and I love you, somehow, we'll manage to make this work."

His voice, so confidant, a trait of Jack's that Pitch had hated the moment he saw him.

Probably because it was something he himself never had.

"Alright?"

"Yeah..."

Pitch choked out, which was when Jack finally gave in for another kiss.

With their kiss the light swept away, as if the dam had broken and the shadows came back to pool in the sunken trench.

There was no sight, only touch, and each touch, electric.

They were nowhere, but, nowhere together.

Jack had wondered where all the shadows went, but he found them.

Right there, with Pitch.

In the dark, they circled and pressed their noses into whatever patch of skin they could find.

Nuzzling like two stray dogs who had finally found a home.

**A/N: And that's all, folks. The end. I hope you have enjoyed this story, I have enjoyed every review and will miss this journey. Thank you all for joining me in it.**


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